The fate of the Spring Festival this year is more tortuous than the plot of several blockbusters scheduled to be released.
In just a few days, several films of the Spring Festival file have undergone drastic changes from emergency file upgrades to all withdrawals. Overnight, Xu Ai’s “Aunt” suddenly announced that it would be available for free online, becoming the first domestic blockbuster movie to premiere directly on the Internet without being screened on the theater.
In this Spring Festival file where most audiences can’t go to the cinema to watch movies, the only remaining “Dong Miao” and “Aunt” have made many netizens chant “a movie ticket for my brother”.
At the same time, many domestic theaters have jointly boycotted “Aunt” and its producer, Huanxi Media, and called on the National Film Bureau to suspend the premiere of “Xiaoma” on the Internet platform.
To please the audience or to live through the difficulties with the theater, return to the original as soon as possible or postpone the screening. Happy Media made a decision within a day. Some people say that this is a change initiated by the streaming media to the traditional film and television industry. In the next time, will we see more domestic blockbusters premiered online?
Free online broadcast of “Aunt”: The audience is very happy and the theater is angry
A few days before the Spring Festival, as the number of pneumonia cases infected by the new coronavirus increased, many people have dispelled the idea of going to the cinema during the Spring Festival. Many more, but this possibility is actually very small.
Because this means that the cost of the early announcement of the movie is basically upAfter the launch of the Internet platform, due to reasons such as shared account and piracy, the producer’s revenue will also be greatly reduced. After all, the Spring Festival file is the most popular one year, and the box office for 7 days in the Spring Festival in 2019 will exceed 5.8 billion. It accounts for nearly 10% of the annual box office.
▲ The box office champion of the Spring Festival last year, “Flow Earth”.
The 7 blockbusters this year are pushing the Spring Festival archives. The industry has high hopes for this. Yu Dong, president of Bona Films, even predicted that this year’s Spring Festival archives will create 12 billion box office, which can be seen from the nearly 500 million pre-sale box office before the withdrawal. One spot. Several Spring Festival films were not announced until the 29th of the year, and at the last minute, they still hoped for release.
Everyone thought that this year’s Spring Festival stalls were going to be in vain. On the morning of the thirtieth day of the new year, Happy Media announced that “Aunt” will be on Douyin, Today ’s Headline, Watermelon Video, Douyin Volcano and Happy Birthday. The premiere on the App such as Ying, viewers can watch for free.
Many viewers did not expect that there will be free premiere of the Spring Festival film online, and the playback platform is not the three largest domestic long video websites in China, but the video platform owned by Byte Beat.
According to the announcement issued by Huanxi Media, ByteDance will rejoice to Huanxi Media’s wholly-owned subsidiaryHi pays at least RMB 630 million, and the previous 2.4 billion guaranteed distribution agreement was terminated, which also means that “Aunt” has recovered its costs. And with more than 630 million in revenue, Huanhuanxi can also get a certain percentage of revenue share.
The efficiency is surprisingly fast. The cooperation agreement was signed on January 23, the day when Aunt announced the withdrawal, and the two parties completed a transaction of more than 600 million in one day.
When the news came out, there was nothing more exciting than the audience. In addition to praising the product side and byte beating, they also said that they would have to contribute movie tickets to the cinema when the movie was released. Stimulated by this news, Huanxi Media’s stock price rose 43%, and its market value soared 3.1 billion.
For viewers, you can watch Chinese New Year movies for free at home. For Huanxi Media and Xu Yan, not only recovered the cost and won word of mouth, but also increased the box office appeal in the future, while the byte beating gave Aiyou Teng a surprise attack in the field of long video.
It looks like a win-win situation, but for the theater, it’s no worse.
It wasn’t long before “Auntie” announced its free online premiere, and more than 20,000 practitioners in the Zhejiang film industry made a public statement saying that the act of “Auntie” Internet premiere was a violation of the industry’s basic rules. Condemn Huanxi Media for kidnapping public opinion and causing heavy losses to theaters across the country.
On New Year’s Eve, Wanda, Dadi, Jinyi and other more than 20 cinema companies across the country also issued similar statements and requested the State Electricity Administration to suspend the free premiere of “Aunt” Internet and regulate the movie During the window period, otherwise films produced by Huanxi Media and Xu Yan will be boycotted.
According to statistics, the co-branded cinema company accounted for 60-70% of the domestic cinema market.
The reason the theater response is so fierce is that in the final analysis, their own interests have been shaken.
As mentioned in both statements, the act of “Mom” premiered on the Internet has made the movie theater’s previous promotion for “Mom” equivalent to making a wedding dress for Byte Beat. With the premiere of “Aunt” online, it is almost impossible for the theater to obtain box office share from “Aunt”.
What worries theaters more is that other Spring Festival films will follow the “moral abduction” of “Aunt”, and many movie theaters will suspend business due to the epidemic this spring.Many movie theaters in the third and fourth tier cities that are “one year in the Spring Festival” are undoubtedly fatal. Even if the movie theaters can survive the epidemic, there is not enough content to attract audiences.
This kind of worry is likely to become a reality. After all, even with the record-breaking Spring Festival file last year and the explosive support of “Reunion 4” and “Nazha”, the cinema has also seen a wave of bankruptcy. It will close after the Spring Festival this year. There may be more cinemas.
This is just an immediate benefit. If the cooperation between “Aunt” and Byte Beat is good, in the future, there may be more movie producers choosing to bypass the theater line and distribute directly online, which will shake the traditional film and television distribution. This is why Hollywood producers have been “siege” Netflix.
For the first time, the Spring Festival film will premiere for free on the Internet. Will it kill the theater?
At home and abroad, the box office has always been the main source of film revenue, especially for large-produced films, which also allows theaters to have a greater say in the distribution process. Cinema line grabTake the right to speak.
This time “Aunt” opened a gap in the domestic film and television industry. Many people speculate that this will open a new chapter for the streaming media revolution. The first is the cinema.
This is not unreasonable, but it is too early to draw a conclusion. There were too many accidental factors in the cooperation between Aunt and Byte Beat.
First of all, in the context of the pneumonia epidemic, the huge movie viewing demand during the Spring Festival could not be met, so when “Aunt” announced its first premiere online for free, it received a warm response.
Secondly, we need to find a “receiver” who is willing to spend a lot of money on byte beating. This time it is equivalent to giving the product to the bottom of the byte beating. Although it can also increase revenue by implanting advertisements, but more, Earn a drink “, it is still unknown whether the future of ByteDance or other video platforms will continue to spend heavily on movie premieres.
And for constantly burning money. For long-term loss-making video websites, it is actually more cost-effective to buy explosive episodes that can last a longer time than buying movie first-run rights.
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▲ Huanxi Premiere, the streaming platform of Huanxi Media.
For the theater, it is not necessarily streaming media that kills the cinema, and its own problems cannot be ignored. Blindly expanding movie theaters have oversaturated the movie theaters. In order to maintain income, the theaters have significantly increased their prices during holidays or some popular movies, which hurt the The audience experience has actually worsened the attendance rate.
In an interview with film scholar Dai Jinhua, said , “Digital technology has replaced film. The changed movie media only leaves theater space. “Will streaming media replace movie theaters in the future? It is possible, but at least for a long time, the two will coexist in a cooperative and complementary relationship.
The title picture comes from: “Aunt”