At the end of 2021, spider man: no return of heroes, which grossed $1.8 billion at the box office, injected a shot in the arm into the weak Hollywood film market for more than two years, showing the market attraction of good content and strong IP.
Under the epidemic, not only the once beautiful North American cinema market has suffered a heavy blow, but also the global film industry is facing a test. After the cold winter in the first half of 2020, China’s film market embarked on the road of recovery, surpassing the North American market for two consecutive years and becoming the largest ticket warehouse in the world. But behind the ranking surpassing, it is still difficult to escape the decline in the absolute value of the box office. In 2021, the annual box office of China was 47.258 billion yuan, which is still far from 64.266 billion yuan in 2019.
According to the data of cat’s eye professional edition, as of March 10, the box office revenue of China’s film market in March was only 380 million yuan Zhu Yuqing, director of the China Film Co.Ltd(600977) Foundation’s special fund for investment and financing, said in an interview with the daily economic news, “at present, the daily box office of about 10000 cinemas is less than 300 yuan, and even the daily utilities are not enough. This year, the box office of less than 20 million per day has appeared for the second time.”. The current market downturn is not only a manifestation of the sequelae of the Spring Festival, but also a reflection of the market downturn this year.
On the other hand, Hollywood’s recovery path ushered in “Batman” after “Spider Man”. The global box office of “new Batman” exceeded 1.5 billion yuan in the first week of release. If the domestic film market wants to get out of the downturn, it also needs to rescue the market.
New Batman Movie Poster source: Douban
this year’s important schedule is still missing
rotten films can’t support the market and hurt the market
According to the data of cat’s eye professional edition, in 2021, the national annual box office of films was 47.258 billion yuan, and the box office of domestic films was 39.927 billion yuan, accounting for 84.49% of the total box office. The total box office and screen count of the whole year continued to rank first in the world.
According to the data, the total output of Chinese films in 2021 was 740, and the number of film viewers in urban cinemas reached 1.167 billion. There are 10 films with a box office of more than 1 billion. Except for “speed and passion 9” and “Godzilla vs. King Kong”, the rest are domestic films. From 2016 to 2019 before the epidemic, domestic films accounted for 58.33%, 53.84%, 62.15% and 64.07% of the box office respectively. After the epidemic, the proportion of domestic films has expanded rapidly, and there are fewer and fewer imported films on the big screen.
According to the statistics of each reporter, since 2020, the number of Hollywood blockbusters released in China has shown an obvious downward trend. Since 2022, only three imported films have appeared on the screen.
Photo source: drawn by reporter Zhu Peng
It can be seen that in 2020, when the global film production plummeted, in order to maintain the cinema market gradually opened in the second half of the year, many Hollywood well-known films were re screened in Chinese cinemas. In addition to the warm “journey to the dream”, the box office of other films exceeded 100 million yuan, especially avatar, which was re screened in March 2021 after 11 years, can still win nearly 400 million box office, It shows the long-term gold attraction of high-quality super blockbusters.
Since then, in the past year, only 10 Hollywood blockbusters have been released in China. However, at the same time, the production of domestic films is still reduced compared with that before the epidemic, especially after 2022, the phenomenon of “lack of films” is becoming more and more obvious. For a market with huge cinema resources and audience capacity, “lack of film” is undoubtedly dangerous.
Zhu Yuqing told reporters: “This year’s film shortage is very serious. Last year, there were some stocks, but this year there are no films at all. And at present, there are no good films, and there are no films in key schedules such as may day. Therefore, the market situation is very severe. Some people are counting the box office these two days. About 10000 cinemas have a daily box office of less than 300 yuan, even the daily utilities Not enough. “
In addition, the schedule effect is gradually becoming the dilemma of China’s film market. It seems that once it is out of schedule, the audience will lose the motivation to enter the cinema. Taking the latest Valentine’s day as an example, the box office revenue on that day was nearly 530 million yuan. In the following three days, the box office continued to decline until it fell below the 100 million yuan mark.
According to the data of cat’s eye professional edition, as of March 11, the total box office of China in 2022 was about 13.4 billion yuan. New year’s day, Spring Festival and Valentine’s day took a total of 11 days, contributing 7.587 billion yuan to the box office, accounting for nearly 60%. The box office performance on non scheduled days is worrying.
Beyond the schedule, the film market needs to think about how the “three noes” films without traffic, IP and big stars can pull the audience into the cinema by relying on quality. Zhu Yuqing believes that good films are still needed. “There are a lot of films with hundreds of thousands of box office in the market. Strictly speaking, they are not films at all, or the original netuniversity. Such bad films not only can’t support the market, but also spoil the audience’s appetite, which is very fatal to the film market.”
for the second time this year, the national box office in a single day is less than 20 million
According to the data of cat’s eye professional edition, on March 9 and 10, the national one-day box office was 18.565 million yuan and 170155 million yuan respectively, hitting a new low in China’s film market in 2022. This is also the second time this year that the one-day box office is less than 20 million.
On Friday, March 9, 2012, a full decade ago, the national single day box office had reached 26.634 million yuan. According to the data of cat’s eye professional edition, a total of 48184 screens produced box office in China on March 9, with a total of 299000 shows, with an average box office of 395.72 yuan per screen, and the number of film viewers decreased sharply by 59.78% compared with the previous day. In the North American release of “new Batman” last weekend, the box office of China’s market did not exceed 100 million yuan a day from Friday to Sunday.
When it is difficult for domestic films to have good works and the attraction of cinemas to audiences is weakened, increasing the introduction of films is also a major measure to stimulate the film market. However, in the two years of repeated epidemic, Hollywood films have been absent from the Chinese market for various reasons.
In the next two months, there will be a batch of Chinese Blockbusters landing in Hollywood. In addition to the new Batman, the mysterious sea, the falling moon, the Spirit Hotel 4 and the IP series magical animals: the mystery of Dumbledore have all been put on file.
“Magical animal: Dumbledore’s mystery” film publicity poster picture source: Douban
Zhu Yuqing believes that increasing the number of imported films is certainly good for the market. “Like” new Batman “, the audience has expectations. Secondly, the audience also needs imported films, which can also make the film market in China more diversified.”
Source: cat’s eye
As the first superhero blockbuster introduced into China this year, the film grossed $134 million in North America in the first week, becoming the second place in the box office of North America during the epidemic, second only to $260 million of spider man: no return of heroes. As of 15 p.m. on March 11, the global box office revenue of the film reached 288 million US dollars. New Batman, which has made a good start in the North American market, may bring a “catfish effect” to the current depressed Chinese cinema market.
The lack of film content is also caused by the reluctance of each person in the industry to provide the film. “First of all, the economic environment is poor, and the lack of investment and no source of films are fatal. Second, the review process. The reporting, project approval and review cycle of films is very long. Many films wait for the shooting license first, otherwise they can’t start, and then wait for the supply license, otherwise they can’t be released. The whole process management is actually chaotic. Market behavior still needs to be handed over to the market, Relevant departments need more services. “
“If we want to get out of the market downturn, we must have an adequate supply of heavy films. Therefore, there are also voices calling for liberalizing the access of batch films and relaxing film censorship. If we do not solve the problem of content supply, I’m afraid more than half of the cinemas will not be able to persist, which will have devastating consequences on the film infrastructure.” The above industry insiders said.
