**: Sina Entertainment.
At the beginning of 2024, the box office failure of "Flower Thousand Bone" poured cold water on the hot "drama film".
As of 11 o'clock on January 31, the comprehensive box office of the film version of "Flower Thousand Bone" was only 61980 thousand. "The popular IP+ popular actor Chen Duling, who exploded ten years ago", still failed to save the precarious box office, and producer Tang Lijun also posted a long post in response: "The box office is too far from what we expected. ”
In 2023, there is also a word-of-mouth drama that suffered a box office waterloo when adapting the movie. The film version of "Love is Delicious" created by the original Renma only had a box office of 145510 thousand. The film versions of "I Want to See You" and "Twinkle Twinkle Twinkle Star", which have gained a lot at the box office, have all suffered IP word-of-mouth**, and the audience's expectations have dropped.
It can be found that most of the cases of "drama to film" are difficult to achieve a bumper harvest of business and word-of-mouth, but there are still more popular dramas on the road of "film change". At the beginning of 2024, "Family with Children" announced the start of the original cast of film projects, and the film versions of "Xun Qin" and "I Don't Want to Be Friends with You" are also in the list of films to be screened. However, "Family with Children" was regarded by some netizens as "harvesting feelings", and the words "bad movie booking" also appeared in the comment area of "Looking for Qin".
Compared with online articles and comics, drama-based movies have been verified by the market in film and television and casting. Zhuyu is in front, why is it so difficult to change a hit drama into a movie? And is drama reform a business that makes money without losing money?
What are the routines of the drama reform?
Different from the idea of film and television companies to develop movies and TV series respectively after purchasing IP, many dramas in the film and television industry are changed to films, usually after the drama is popular, and the main creative team launches film works with the nature of drama fan services in order to continue the popularity of IP and make up for the regrets of dramas.
The main creator of "Twinkle Twinkle Twinkle Star" once revealed in a dialogue with Entertainment Li that he did not consider making a movie after filming the drama, but because the drama happened to have an open ending, many viewers just wanted to make up for the regrets of Zhang Wansen and Lin Beixing, and the movie was put on the agenda. Zhang Linshu, the producer of "Family with Children", revealed that the reason why the original team was convened to remake the movie version of "Family with Children" was because everyone loved this work too much for more than ten years, hoping to satisfy their feelings and inherit the work. At the same time, Chen Zhengdao, who was in charge of the drama version and the movie version of "Love is Delicious", said bluntly that because he couldn't give up the three sisters Liu Jing, Fang Xin and Xia Meng, but the script of the second season couldn't be written so quickly, so he decided to shoot a transitional movie version first.
Then, this kind of drama film can't follow the idea of IP adaptation, and shoot the same story with a different team, but try to use the same team to shoot a new story. At present, domestic drama adaptations usually tell the story of the sequel, extra-fan or parallel time and space on the basis of continuing the character design of the original drama.
For example, on the basis of the end of the drama version, the film version of "I Want to See You" also uses the time-traveling mode to give the uneasy Li Ziwei and Huang Yuxuan the opportunity to fall in love, and even created Li Ziwei, Chen Yunru, Mo Junjie, and Huang Yuxuan who are talked about by drama fans in the same frame.
Although it meets the CP party's sugar needs, many characters have become tool people, without a sense of growth and fate, and have lost the most precious social issues in the drama version**, such as Chen Yunru's suicide, Wang Quansheng's school violence, etc. In the end, this movie was also called a 103-minute easter egg by fans.
The film version of "Love is Delicious" directly continues the content of the series, still tells the story of the three sisters, still has two major elements of love and food, and the narrative style and technique also follow the mode of the series. Chen Zhengdao mentioned in the ** dialogue that the challenge of making a movie is why the audience should sit in a dark space to watch a story in two hours, so he added his own feelings in life to the movie, hoping that the audience can accept a little expression of the creator. Although the word-of-mouth of the film version is close to the drama version, the final box office is not ideal.
The adaptation idea of the film version of "Flower Thousand Bone" has the meaning of parallel time and space. At the same time, Tang Lijun, the producer who worked on the drama version and the film version, posted an article mentioning that when she conceived the film version, she was thinking, what else can it bring to the audience? During filming in Guangxi, a pair of Guangxi girls inspired the creative team, and they set the theme as "The Transformation and Growth of Women", and added suspense lines that were not available in the drama version.
However, the charm of the drama version of "Hua Qiangu" lies not only in the individual narrative, but also in the group narrative, that is, how Hua Qiangu thinks about love and responsibility, growth and trade-offs among the characters such as Bai Zihua, Killing Qianmo, Ni Mantian, and Tangbao. The way in which the movie "triples the speed" through the plot sacrifices the group portrait, and it is naturally difficult to talk about the personal growth line.
What is the difficulty in changing the drama?
So, what is the difficulty in changing the drama?
Hu Jianli, secretary general of the China Film Critics Society, once mentioned in an interview with ** that it is more difficult to adapt a drama to a movie than a new original story. Although the adaptation can take advantage of the IP effect, the advantage lies more in the later publicity and marketing. For content production, adaptations are often constrained by the story, characters, structure, starring and other parties, and the requirements for screenwriters and directors are very high.
From the point of view of text structure, movie scripts are usually around tens of thousands of words, with a core theme, a single main line, and the main and supporting characters serve the main line. The script of the drama is about hundreds of thousands of words, with a core theme, a main line and multiple branches, showing the core of the story through group portraits. Then, on the basis of retaining the main line and protagonist, a large number of branch lines and supporting roles must be cut, not only to tell a good story in a tenfold shrinkage of volume, but also to ensure that the characters and plot can stand; It is necessary not only to innovate on the original main line, but also to meet the demands of old drama fans.
But judging from the current works, most creators can only do one of them. For example, some netizens complained that the film version of "Twinkle Twinkle Twinkle Star" is like a script that ran out after entering the keywords "secret love, crossing, accident death, Zhang Wan Forest North Star" in AI. In addition to gathering these classic elements, only the unreasonable plot logic and characters remain. "Love is Delicious" meets the demands of fans of old dramas, but there is no background introduction when the characters appear, resulting in audiences who have not watched the drama but watched the movie directly may be confused about the relationship between the characters.
From the perspective of the production process, many creators did not have the idea of developing the movie version at the same time when developing the series. After the series became popular, it began to use IP ideas to create a film version. However, the popularity of a drama series is often the right time and place, which does not mean that it is a good IP suitable for various adaptations.
After the broadcast of "Flower Thousand Bone" in 2015, a modern version of the web drama "Flower Thousand Bones 2015" was broadcast while the iron was hot, telling the story of Hua Qiangu's thousand-year covenant to continue Baizi's painting to 2015 and re-encounter the grievances of the previous life in modern times. Although the popularity of "Flower Thousand Bone" exceeded 1.5 billion, the production was full of shoddy work, and it was called "ruining the original work" by fans of the original drama.
Eight years later, the audience's tastes have undergone earth-shaking changes, and "master-apprentice love" has changed from the "forbidden beauty" of the year to the "old routine". In 2023, after the broadcast of "Heavy Purple", which also has plots such as master-apprentice love and from immortal to demon, it will be criticized for "ancient plots" and "characters reduce intelligence".
When it came to the movie version of "Flower Thousand Bone", Tang Lijun posted that when the series was on the air, she had discussed working with the original cast again, but the starring schedule was not ready until 2019, and the film version project was not restarted until 2019, and new actors were used to star, and it will be delayed in 2024. At this time, nearly 10 years have passed since the drama version became popular, and it is difficult for audiences who have read countless Xianxia drama routines to pay for this "old bottle" anymore.
Is drama adaptation a good business?
From the point of view of business logic, dramas and movies are also completely different ways to play.
Entertainment Studio previously reported that before the broadcast of the series, the investment promotion will mainly look at the cast and production team, whether it is a first-line big IP, and whether it is a sequel to a hit drama. Due to the long broadcast cycle of dramas, word-of-mouth can slowly ferment with the advancement of the plot, and some dramas that are not optimistic in the early stage but explode after the broadcast will also attract brands to chase after them.
The income of the movie** mainly depends on the box office. Unlike dramas that can be watched at any time, watching movies is a short-term social behavior, and the box office is very easily affected by schedule, type, marketing, and word-of-mouth.
According to the Lighthouse's "2023 China Film Market Annual Inventory Report", the 2023 schedule contributed 68% of the annual box office, 11% more than in 2019. Among them, the Spring Festival box office accounted for 12%, and the summer box office accounted for 38%, and the two major periods directly contributed 50% of the box office throughout the year.
The schedule of the Lighthouse Lab means that the audience has a concentrated social viewing demand, and genre films that meet the schedule have become a rigid demand. It can be found that "Twinkle Twinkle Twinkle Twinkle Star" and "I Want to See You", which have better box office results in the drama adaptation, are all love themes, and they chose to be released in the Chinese New Year file.
Among them, "I Want to See You" released a "two-way running" trailer in the week of New Year's Eve, and carried out New Year's Eve theme marketing, focusing on the New Year's Eve ritual of "listening to a golden song of "I Want to See You" and watching a "I Want to See You" at 22:13 on December 31. In the end, the film received 7375 on New Year's Eve50,000 box office, and finally won 40.3 billion box office. The film version of "Twinkle Twinkle Twinkle Star" has created a super 3The pre-sale results of 600 million were finally 69.5 billion became the box office champion of the New Year's Day file in mainland film history.
Love is Delicious" and "Flower Thousand Bone" were both released on weekends. However, Beacon data shows that the non-schedule box office in 2023 will regress compared with 2021, and it will become the lowest proportion in the past five years except for 2022. The three major genres that can effectively drive the weekend schedule are popular Japanese animation, some Hollywood blockbusters and suspenseful crime movies, all of which are typical commercial genre films.
In contrast, although the film version of "Love is Delicious" sets the genre as "urban love", it focuses on "female friendship" and "long live sisters" in terms of marketing actions. Female themes can become potential stocks for popular dramas in dramas with strong companionship attributes, but in the field of movies with strong social attributes, it is difficult to pry the audience to go out on weekends and spend money with girlfriends to taste two-hour friendship. Beacon data shows that the main audience of the film version of "Love is Delicious" is women aged 20-24 and in fourth-tier cities, but such users are more inclined to love, suspense and comedy themes.
Similarly, the film version of "Flower Thousand Bone" focuses on fantasy in terms of genre, and even put the words "classic fantasy girls love to watch" on the promotional poster. But former fans of dramas are now at a mature age, and they are not interested in spending money to go to the cinema to watch a familiar story. For the new wave of young audiences, the freshness of the teams and IPs of various Xianxia dramas that are being broadcast is significantly better than that of the film version of "Flower Thousand Bone". Beacon data shows that the proportion of fantasy films at the box office has also continued to decline in the past five years, not as good as crime, suspense, adventure, science fiction, and animation themes.
The change of the drama is not a good business of "making sure you don't lose money" as you imagined. The motives and demands of the audiences of movies and TV series are completely different, and film marketing and distribution is an extremely professional and sophisticated business. The genre is not strong, the audience is misplaced, and the marketing is misplaced, which may lead to a box office crash.
The movie that lies "to make money on explosive dramas no longer exists.