The era of ignoring the audience is over.
Editor’s note: This article is from the WeChat public account “IC Lab” ( ID: InsightPlusClub), author Xu Beidou.
The horror of “Shanghai Fortress” is a great thing for the market. Capital will realize that if everything is traffic-oriented, it does not really bring benefits. The so-called traffic artist has a brain-breaking statement of one billion box office.
Teng Huatao, the director of the film “Shanghai Fortress” released on August 9th, apologized.
The cost of 360 million, the final box office is expected to be 200 million, the Douban score is 3.3, the cat’s eye score is 5.8, and the double bleakness of “Shanghai Fortress” at the box office and word of mouth is in stark contrast to the overwhelming publicity before the release. Many netizens said that the Chinese science fiction gate that “Wandering Earth” had just opened was closed by “Shanghai Fortress”.
After a lot of criticisms, director Teng Huatao made a self-review on Weibo: 
Director Teng Huatao does not have to apologize. Instead, he should be commended because he has done a good thing in Chinese film merit.
To say that “Shanghai Fortress” has closed the door to Chinese science fiction, it is a bit too much to lift it. As long as there are good sci-fi works on the line, the audience will not regret a movie ticket. Rather than shutting down the door to Chinese science fiction, this work is about closing the door to the flow movie.
01 The first year of bad film marketing
The rotten film can also take the high box office and start from six years ago.
In 2013, the collection of Liu Dehua, Zhang Jingchu, Lin Zhiling, and Dai Dawei as a number of big-name stars, with the first special agent in China as the selling point, “Tianji Fuchun Mountain”When the map is released, it will be a bad comment.
This work Mixed with action, sadism, 3D, science fiction and other commercial elements of the blockbuster, the plot is empty, people set up, in the watercress set a record of 2.9 ultra-low scores.
The condolence is that its box office is “in the opposite direction” from the word-of-mouth. On the first day, it won 46 million box office. In two days, it broke 100 million, ranking first, and finally ended with 300 million box office.
From today’s point of view, the 300 million box office does not seem to be a big deal, but in 2013 it was enough to enter the top 10 of the domestic box office.
Just one year ago, the “Thailand of People’s Ways” opened the era of domestically produced one billion boxes. In that year, the Chinese film market officially surpassed Japan to become the world’s second ticket warehouse. Prior to this, the highest record of the domestic film was Feng Xiaogang’s “Tangshan Earthquake”, but the box office was only 670 million.
“Fuchun” opened the door to “bad film marketing”, and its success also made the capital market realize that the film quality itself and word of mouth are not necessarily related to the box office.
The madness of the audience and the co-ordination of the film critics did not prevent the triumph of this work. On the contrary, Beijing, which is responsible for the marketing of the film, is infinitely comfortable and is very happy to use this high attention to win the box office.
There was a strange phenomenon during the Dragon Boat Festival in 2013. With the mentality of “can’t evaluate without looking at it” or “see how bad it is,” the audience bought tickets and entered the venue. In some places, Fuchun has a attendance rate of 100%.
The special feature of Fuchun is not only in “bad film marketing” but also in its business operation mode.
From the very beginning, creating a good movie is not considered by the producers. How to give back to capital is the true proposition. The four stars of Liu Dehua, Zhang Jingchu, Yan Dawei and Lin Zhiling are aimed at a wider audience.
The same is true of the business elements of chaos, action, love, science fiction, etc., all aimed at reaching more audiences. At the marketing level, Fuchun was positioned as a relatively special “specialist film” in China. It gave up the first-tier city audience early and went to second- and third-tier cities to do more publicity, supplemented by local media reports.
In the present words, it is “the market sinks.”
This kind of filmmaking with the idea of making products has undoubtedly won the favor of the capital side. For them, looking for market positioning, asking big stars, doing promotion and promotion of these things can be done with money, and controllable, this is what they are best at.
and content creation is an uncertain factor.
In other words, if word of mouth can’t affect the box office, why should we focus on the movie itself? Once you find a way to make money easily, capital will naturally circumvent complex, uncontrollable conditions.
With the rapid growth of domestic box office, the film began to become a shortcut for capital to make money. This kind of disregard of the content, only the star and propaganda production methods, said that it is not an exaggeration for the era of the rotten film of domestic films.
02The small era of attack
If “Fuchun” only opens a doorway to the flow movie era, then Guo Jingming’s “Small Times” series is to open the door.
is similar to Fuchun, and in June 2013, it is probably the darkest June of the domestic film. The “Little Age 1” was released, and the watercress was only 4.7. Points, but eventually harvested 438 million box office results.
More serious in the spring, Guo Jingming took the pattern of the set. That is to say, the two works were taken together, and the final editing became “Little Age 1” and “Little Times 2”, which were released in the same year.
The audience has not slowed down in June yet, and in August, another month later, a bad crit was ushered in.
The method of filming minimizes the cost of film production, and the two films add up to a production cost of 47 million. Although the second part of the box office has not reached 300 million, but together they have won nearly 800 million box office. If you calculate by one, it has already surpassed “Iron Man 3” and won the 2013 Mainland box office runner-up.
Guo Jingming has many identities such as writers and directors, but his best identity is a businessman. Treating plagiarism from that year