New forms, new opportunities are behind
Editor’s note: This article is from the micro-channel public number “New Abstract Business Review” (ID: xinzhainews), Author: three stone.
Under the ever-changing movie market trend, online distribution has become one of the important choices for more and more movies to “come out”.
Wen/Three Stones
Production/New Business Review
Q1 movie market in 2021 can be said to be rich, interesting and promising.
Wealthy, it shows that in the first quarter of this year, the domestic film market was strong, almost contributing nearly 3/4 of the world’s box office, and “outstanding” in the global film market. Statistics show that the final transcript for the 2021 Spring Festival file is 7.822 billion, a new record in Chinese film history.
Interesting, there are two aspects. First of all, Q1 comedy movies dominate the mainstream, bringing a variety of “laughs” to the audience. Secondly, based on a new historical change in the Spring Festival stalls, the online schedule concept is the first time. This change is quite interesting from the perspective of user viewing, commercial value and industry development. After all, our viewing mode has been relatively fixed for a long time, and there is no new form of impact.
The first opportunity is related to the online Spring Festival file mentioned above. While offline Spring Festival files are in full swing, there are also two online films “The Legend of Shaolin Temple” and “Fortune Diary” leading the online Spring Festival files in PVOD mode to enrich the audience’s diverse viewing needs. However, the signal behind this is: China’s film market has already shown a complementary situation of online and offline distribution. The key to the first opportunity is the PVOD model. This model, known as Premium Video on Demand, breaks the traditional 90-day VOD distribution window. Movies can be launched in theaters and streaming media at the same time. Or it can be understood that the PVOD model is equivalent to adding a new distribution channel for the film industry, paralleling the offline model, and jointly opening the inherent boundaries of the century-old film industry.
From the above industry phenomena, it is not difficult to find that in the Chinese film market in 2021, users will have a strong demand for viewing movies, and the industry will make money. Creation and viewing forms will become interesting while meeting the diverse needs of users. It is worth noting that the PVOD model, which has ample opportunities, has become a blue ocean in the continuous development of the past year. IQIYI, which first launched the PVOD model in China, used its own operations to take advantage of the track. Currently, it has absorbed many types of films and chose the PVOD model for online distribution.The blockbuster film “Journey”, the Oscar-winning film “Marriage Story”, French authoritative film magazine’s 2020 “Top Ten Movies” “Spring River Plumbing”, overseas animation blockbuster “SpongeBob SquarePants: Rescue Adventure” and so on.
First, the rich 2021 Chinese film market
The skyrocketing box office of Q1 in 2021 broke the silent year of the movie market.
According to the preliminary statistics of the National Film Funding Office, the box office of city theaters nationwide for the 2021 Spring Festival (February 11-17) is 7.822 billion yuan, exceeding 5.905 billion yuan in 2019, an increase of 32.47%, a refresh The box office record of the Spring Festival stalls. During the Spring Festival Golden Week, a total of 160 million audiences were attracted to the theater (132 million for the Spring Festival in 2019, an increase of 21%); the number of screenings reached 2,637,700 (2,627,200 for the 2019 Spring Festival).
Not only that, as of 0:00 on February 12, the total real-time pre-sales for the Spring Festival 2021 reached 1.463 billion yuan, and “Detective Chinatown 3” set a record for the total single-film pre-sales with 968 million yuan.
In addition, the price of this year’s Spring Festival movie has increased compared with the 2019 Spring Festival. According to data from Maoyan movies, the average ticket price of each of the 7 films in this year’s Spring Festival file ranges from RMB 47 to RMB 50. In the Spring Festival of 2019, except for the average ticket price of “Wandering Earth”, which is around RMB 47, the ticket price of several other films is about RMB 41-44.
In this regard, industry insiders generally believe that movie watching has become a “new folk custom” during the Chinese New Year in recent years. During the Chinese New Year holiday, when new movies are launched, the demand for domestic audiences is greater than the supply, which has led to a higher price of movies. Rising, which is in line with economic laws, and it can be seen that as long as the film is exciting enough, people’s demand for watching movies remains strong.
“Fa Cai Diary” stills image
As the offline box office is in full swing, online is also actively working on the premise of satisfying users’ viewing needs. Two new cinema-level films “Fortune Diary” and “The Shaolin Temple””Depot Legend” became the king of online movie Spring Festival this year. According to the popularity of the “Spring Festival file” on the Yunhe Data Online, the effective broadcast of “Fa Cai Diary” has a market share of 25.45% from New Year’s Eve to the sixth and seventh days, followed by “The Legend of Shaolin Temple” with 16.99%. Films occupy almost half of the market.
It is worth mentioning that the offline Spring Festival stalls have achieved a box office score of nearly 10 billion through the accumulation of nearly 20 years. Online is only the first year. Thanks to the joint efforts of the three major video platforms, it has achieved good box office word-of-mouth results. Together with offline Spring Festival files, it has created a strong presence of comedians during the Spring Festival. Brings users a variety of comedy content.
The momentum continues. The action comedy network movie “Fake Bodyguard” starring Wang Taili, Liu Yan, and Wang Luojia, is directed by Wang Taili, a member of “Chopstick Brothers”, which is also being broadcast exclusively on iQiyi in PVOD mode. A week after it went online, the film’s content popularity value on the iQiyi station was as high as 7057, and it topped the iQiyi movie hit list, action list, and Chinese language list. At the same time, the total number of topics read on social platforms exceeded 61 million; the total number of topics played on short video platforms exceeded 1 billion. Aroused widespread user attention.
“Fake Bodyguard” stills
It is not difficult to see that in the Q1 movie market of 2021, while online and offline work together to create more interesting content, it also brings greater commercial profitability to the industry.
Two, interesting 2021 Chinese film market
The Chinese film market in Q1 of 2021 will be full of “laughs”, and many comedians’ highlights are bursting this quarter.
This year’s Spring Festival, Jia Ling’s directorial debut “Hello, Li Huanying” has surpassed many industrial blockbusters, winning more than 5.3 billion box office, once again showing the magic of comedy.
In fact, Jia Ling is not the only comedian who realizes his dreams through works during the Spring Festival. Online distribution channels also let Wang Baoqiang and Song Xiaobao realize their movie dreams. Influenced by Jet Li’s version of “Shaolin Temple” when he was young, Wang Baoqiang, who entered the Shaolin Temple to practice martial arts, ushered in the Kung Fu movie “The Legend of Shaolin Temple” starring in him. Song Xiaobao, who has been out of variety shows for a long time, finally came up with self-written and self-directedThe film “Fortune Diary” has a grassroots perspective and sincere polishing, even after the film was released online, it won the recognition and respect of Douban netizens.
“The Legend of Shaolin Temple” still pictures
Many comedians adopt the PVOD model to realize their movie dreams for two main reasons. First of all, the film crew may consider the competitiveness of the film, as well as the brutality of “Hello, Li Huanying” and “Detective Chinatown 3”. If they don’t choose to go online, the box office will likely be crushed. The network platform can hold a large amount of information without being restricted by film arrangement. At the same time, the platform uses algorithmic push to achieve accurate access from content to users, making publicity more time-saving, labor-saving, accurate and efficient. It is more friendly to newcomers and newcomer’s works, making it more likely to be “seen”.
Secondly, compared to traditional cinema chains, online cinema chains are still a new market, although they are also in the process of boutique transformation. For example, iQiyi “Super Cinema” released the best of French Film and TV Critics Union in PVOD mode. “Spring River Plumbing” was awarded the first foreign language film award, and “Spring Tide” was awarded as the top ten Chinese film of the year in the 12th Annual Festival of Youth Film Manual. However, the current network theaters have not yet reached the stage of investing, star, and IP, and the barriers to entry are low. The introduction of the PVOD model has further improved the business model of online distribution of movies, and helped it break through the revenue ceiling and form a more healthy and virtuous circle.
“Spring Tide” stills
Although online box office data has not yet been made public, in the eyes of most people, the sinking of these two works into online movies is definitely a business wise move. In addition, many film and television companies in the industry have begun to deploy online PVOD mode distribution. They have produced “Spring River Plumbing”, and Huang Xufeng, the founder of Factory Gate Pictures, once said in an interview with the media that the company has established an online film development team. , Is actively embracing the era of mobile membership payment.
Actually, not only the Chinese market is experimenting with the PVOD distribution model, but the global market is full of enthusiasm for this distribution model.
From the recent launch of “1/2 Magic” and “Mulan” on streaming media by Disney in PVOD mode, to the simultaneous launch of “Wonder Woman 1984” by Warner, more and more global head IPs are choosing The way of online distribution. It is worth mentioning that among the 8 new films recently announced in North America, the high-profile “Black Widow” adopts the form of simultaneous online and offline distribution to reduce the number of offline theaters due to the epidemic. The negative performance of the film at the box office brought about by too little.
It is sufficient to prove that the online distribution of PVOD mode is no longer a temporary move under the epidemic, and has become an inevitable trend. In the ever-changing film market trend, online distribution has become one of the important choices for more and more films to “come out”.
Three, behind PVOD is a blue ocean
As far as the film industry is concerned, a new blue ocean has emerged.
An industry insider said: The continuous shortening of the interval between theater screenings and “watching at home” is the general trend of the entire film industry in the past two decades.
The New York Times columnist Nick Bilton wrote in “Flip the World”: “I don’t want to follow other people’s schedule to come to the theater, and I have to endure the high price of theater popcorn, and there may even be a constant chatter. People sitting behind me, I would rather watch a movie at home, watch it at a time I like, eat microwave popcorn, drink free tap water, and use a convenient pause button to deal with the inevitable restroom time… starting with music, We can see that this has happened in almost all other industries. People will always find a way to get content in the format, form and size they want.”
In addition, the current user’s habit of paying for movies on the Internet is also becoming more mature, and with the advent of the 5G era, the definition of video will continue to change. For movies with social attributes, sometimes they may need to be screened and watched in the living room. It has better “socializing” effect than public places such as theaters.
“Fake Bodyguard” stills
In addition to the above C-oriented advantagesIn addition, the PVOD model has a positive effect on the upstream and downstream of the film industry. Whether it is to supplement and dilute the diversified distribution channels of the film, or to provide a “dream stage” for small and medium creators, or to promote the platform’s diversified and superimposed business model under the general trend of content “focusing”, these are the value points of PVOD. .
From the perspective of providing opportunities for small and medium creators, the PVOD model promotes the formation of a positive feedback mechanism in the upstream of the film industry. Under the traditional offline distribution model, theater chains must consider film effects, such as director, production, box office, and many other factors, seeking the “strongest attraction” for distribution. In the PVOD mode, the D2C (Direct-to-Consumer) form is realized. The channel of “dialogue” between the film party and the user is directly opened up, and the two parties can “see” each other. The user selects and purchases the process of online distribution of the film. In fact, it is also the process of scoring content. In this context, a virtuous creative cycle mechanism is established.
In addition, for the platform, this also contributes to the formation of a “diversified” content ecology, which is conducive to further enhancing the core competitiveness of the platform. According to relevant data calculations, the total number of users of iQiyi, Youku, and Tencent has now exceeded 200 million. As far as the current situation is concerned, the market has developed from an incremental market to a stock market, looking for new growth points and building a more core platform. The competitiveness of the video platform has become a core issue.
The PVOD mode is just an excellent “plus point.” On the one hand, it can help platforms such as iQiyi reach more diversified commercial realizations, such as single-film payment through high-quality films, or box office sharing with film owners; on the other hand, it can also absorb high-quality content through this model , To make more comprehensive and diversified supplements to the content ecology, and further enhance the user retention rate.
Behind the new form is a new opportunity, and behind the new opportunity is a huge new blue ocean. And the person who first discovered the blue ocean is always the easiest to get the bonus.