As of February 3, the Spring Festival has been more than half, and its average ticket price has reached 53 yuan, a record high over the years. Microblog users exclaimed that this may be the most expensive Spring Festival in history. However, in the past five years, the average ticket price of the Spring Festival has been rising every year. Maybe at the same time next year, we will find that there is no most expensive, only more expensive.
With the increase of ticket prices, the total box office of the Spring Festival has also increased over the years. Any film that has the opportunity to participate wants to take a share. The film label on the lighthouse Professional Edition shows that of the eight films participating in the deer race this year’s Spring Festival, except for three animated films, the other five are feature films. Among them, “miracle stupid child” tells about young people’s entrepreneurship, “Four Seas” is a love film and comedy with Han Han’s personal style, “this killer is not too calm” has happy Mahua to join, while “shuimen bridge of Changjin Lake” and “sniper” are war films that do not often appear in this period of time. More notably, as of February 3, the box office share of “shuimen bridge of Changjin Lake” was about 43.9%, far exceeding the 24.7% of the second place, “the killer is not too calm”, and is expected to win the championship of this year’s Spring Festival.
In fact, after combing, it can be found that behind the reshuffle of the champion film seats in the Spring Festival every year, the head film and television company as the producer maintains a stable force
Watergate bridge leads the box office by the most
As a sequel to Changjin lake, the cumulative box office champion in 2021, shuimen bridge of Changjin lake has been a success in the pre-sale link. In mid January, some Weibo netizens speculated: “the box office of shuimen bridge is basically stable. No wonder some films have been withdrawn.” According to the data of Lighthouse professional edition, its pre-sale box office on the premiere day was about 344 million yuan. On the same track, the pre-sale box office of “this killer is not too calm”, “miracle stupid child” and “Four Seas” on the premiere day just exceeded 100 million yuan, and that of “sniper” was about 28.41 million yuan.
After the official release, “shuimen bridge of Changjin Lake” has always been the first. As of press time, the gap between its box office share and the second place “the killer is not too calm” was even close to 20%. Longitudinal comparison from 2017 to 2021, ignoring the special case of the interruption of the Spring Festival due to the sudden covid-19 pneumonia epidemic in 2020, such a big score lead has never appeared this year
(data source: Lighthouse Professional Edition)
Why is there such a big gap between the box office of the film with the most champion and the second place? The gap of film arrangement is one of the influencing factors. On February 1, the number of films in “shuimen bridge in Changjin Lake” was about 26.6%, that in “miracle stupid child” was about 21.4%, that in “Four Seas” was about 16.6%, that in “this killer is not too calm” was about 14.7%, and that in “sniper” was about 9.7%.
Due to the fermentation of market reaction, the cinema has made fine adjustments to the film arrangement. On February 2, the film arrangement of “shuimen bridge in Changjin Lake” increased to 32.4%. “The killer is not too calm” began to counter attack, with 18% of the films, while “miracle stupid child” dropped to 13.5%. In addition to the overall film arrangement, the golden number of “shuimen bridge of Changjin Lake” on that day accounted for 36.7%, and that of “the killer is not too calm” was 20%. The other “players” were even more difficult to catch up with.
On February 3, the film arrangement of shuimen bridge in Changjin lake was still more than 30%, 31.8%. “The killer is not too calm” increased to 21.9%. And the former accounted for 36.2% of the golden games. The latter accounted for 25.1%, and the two together accounted for more than 60% of the golden games.
Compared with the fierce fighting of feature films, the arrangement of the three animated films is generally low. Huang Weiming, the director of pleasant goat and grey wolf out of the future, who only got less than 4% of the films for three consecutive days, repeatedly called on his personal microblog: “more films to let more people see this film!” “There is too little film arrangement. Even if there is, it is mostly at 8 a.m.”. Director Huang also said: “pleasant goat is the most underestimated film in the Spring Festival.”
(image source: Lighthouse Professional Edition)
The reporter of Economic Observer network interviewed the cinema manager of a fifth tier city nearby, “For a small city like ours, the local market is so big. But during the Spring Festival, many people return home, and the demand for movies increases greatly. The Spring Festival is even one of the most important schedules of the whole year. Cinemas will naturally keep up with the box office, including the pre-sale box office, when they see the occupancy rate, they will also adjust the film arrangement,” he said According to the data of Lighthouse professional edition, the films with the highest attendance on February 1 and February 2 are “bear haunt: return to earth”, 57.4% and 40.3% respectively. Followed by 46.4% and 40.2% of “this killer is not too calm”, and 44.8% and 32.1% of “shuimen bridge of Changjin Lake”. Perhaps because of this, the number of films in “bear haunt: return to earth” increased by about 1% on February 3. The attendance rate of “pleasant goat and grey wolf out of the future” did not exceed 30% for three consecutive days, and there was no significant change in the number of films
when war films reach the top, has the audience’s taste changed?
With the aura of champion, “shuimen bridge of Changjin Lake” is also blessed with labels such as “hot sequel”, “original team”, “good word-of-mouth film” and so on. His previous work “Changjin Lake” was released on September 30, 2021, and did not completely leave the national cinemas until January 4, 2022, and then “shuimen bridge of Changjin Lake” was released on February 1. When “shuimen bridge of Changjin Lake” took over, many viewers still had an impression of “Changjin Lake”.
In an interview with reporters, Ms. Chen, who is over 50, even had some doubts. She said: “didn’t Changjin lake just be released? Why did it come to the Spring Festival again?” After listening to the reporter’s introduction, she said: “Changjin lake is very good-looking, the war scene is very shocking, and this kind of patriotism education is very good. At that time, the unit gave us film tickets, and many people went to see it. Now the sequel comes out, you can still go to see it if you have the opportunity.”
According to Octopus monitoring data, “Changjin Lake” has 93% positive comments, 4% neutral comments and 3% negative comments on the whole network. “Too beautiful”, “shocking”, “moving”, “remembering history” and “Yiyang Qianxi” have become the high-frequency words mentioned in the whole network commentary. On Douban, after about 680000 people rated, “Changjin Lake” scored 7.4, with a good reputation. “Changjin Lake” finally reached a cumulative box office of 5.775 billion yuan, becoming the cumulative box office champion in 2021, making a good start for its sequel.
An industry insider said: “in recent years, the number and quality of theme films have significantly improved. The box office performance is the result of market choice. It can also be seen that this type of film has done a better job in cultivating the market. Now the theme films are not only popular with middle-aged and elderly people.” On January 19, Zhihu released the 2021 film and television data report, which also showed that on average, 50% of the audience of theme films such as Changjin lake, me and my parents and Chinese doctor are young people under the age of 30.
The reporter combed the champion films and runner up films of the Spring Festival from 2017 to 2021 and found that the top films in previous years were basically comedy, fantasy and action adventure. Only this year is the top of war films for the time being. “War” and “tragic” seem to be inconsistent with the atmosphere of family happiness. However, Ms. Chen said: “it’s good to see some hip-hop movies during the Spring Festival in previous years, but it’s also good to have a choice like” shuimen bridge of Changjin Lake “this year. It can be imagined that its war scene will be more shocking, the effect of going to the cinema is good, and it’s instructive for the whole family to see this patriotic film.” Another audience member in his 20s, Mr. Gao, told reporters: “Watergate bridge is very good-looking. I took my mother to see it and cried. The last film Changjin lake was very good. I have long expected Watergate bridge. It doesn’t matter whether it’s the Spring Festival or not. I just went to see it at this time. I’ve only seen this one at present.”
Live up to expectations. On the morning of February 3, “shuimen bridge of Changjin Lake” has set a new record for the box office of war films in the Spring Festival of Chinese film history. Previously, this record was maintained by “operation Red Sea”, which ranked third in the box office of the 2018 spring Festival
the cinema market reversed its fatigue, and the head film and television company Changhong
Having experienced the test of the sudden covid-19 pneumonia epidemic in 2020, the cinema market has not only survived the cold winter, but also radiated new vitality in the post epidemic era.
According to public data, although the total box office of the Spring Festival from 2017 to 2019 climbed from 3.4 billion yuan to 5.9 billion yuan, the growth rate of the box office actually began to slow down. The total number of tickets issued even showed negative growth in 2019. Even if the ticket price rose sharply that year, the growth rate of the total box office was only 2.32%. It shows that the growth potential of the Spring Festival before the epidemic has shown fatigue. The actual audience is less and tickets are more expensive. The growth of the box office mainly depends on the rise of ticket prices
(data source: Lighthouse Professional Edition)
After the epidemic was controlled, the audience who could finally enjoy the Spring Festival increased the total box office to 7.843 billion yuan in 2021, an increase of about 32% compared with 2019. This year, ticket prices increased by about 9% compared with 2019, and the total number of tickets increased by 21%. We can find that after the epidemic, the China Film Co.Ltd(600977) market in 2021 has indeed stimulated new vitality. The total ticket issuance and ticket prices have increased, driving the rise of the total box office.
As of February 3, the total box office of this year’s Spring Festival was about 3.744 billion yuan, which is still expected to surpass that of 2021. According to the company library data of Lighthouse professional edition, as the producer, if sorted by box office revenue, the top three are China Film Co.Ltd(600977) , Alibaba Film Group Co., Ltd. and Wanda film and television media Co., Ltd. Looking at their works, we will find that China Film Co.Ltd(600977) and Alibaba Film Group Co., Ltd. participated in the production of the top and second place films of the 2017-2019 Spring Festival, such as Chinatown detective 3, Hello, Li Huanying, wandering the earth, Chinatown detective 2, and Changjin lake. Wanda film and television media Co., Ltd. participated in the production of Chinatown detective 3, wandering earth, Chinatown detective 2 and so on. Although the champion seats of the Spring Festival every year are beating drums and passing flowers, the drumstick is still in the hands of head film and television companies.
