Special feature of 1905 film network "The road of life, the dream is like a long road, the wind and frost in the road, the wind and frost are dry, and in the red dust, how many directions does the dream have?"
An old song brings back countless memories. Released in 1987, it has become a classic Hong Kong movie in the hearts of countless fans. Thirty-three years later, the May 1st online movie adapted from this IP was launched, which caused a lot of discussion and even controversy.
According to the latest data revealed by Tencent video, the box office of the film reached 35.228 million after 14 days of release. In terms of word of mouth, 20,000 viewers gave an average score of 4.9 points on the Douban platform. It is worth mentioning that the production and publicity costs of the film have reached 20 million, which is a top match in the online movie market.
From the initial cost of tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands to the current investment of tens of millions, the cost of online movies is increasing. At the same time, the value of head online movies is also constantly setting a new record. Behind this, how much investment in online movies is relatively safe? In addition to the box office, can derivatives and overseas copyrights provide a profitable new continent for online movies?
Is Ghost Story: Human Love broken?
At present, the word "broken circle" is the highest praise of the media for the film drama synthesis, and it is also the ultimate pursuit of film and television works.This film Ghost Story: Human Love seems to be between broken and unbreakable. On the one hand, it did break some old prejudices of people to a certain extent, and brought some thoughts to the industry. On the other hand, its heat energy seemed to be sealed inside the film and television industry, which did not attract more passers-by to participate in the discussion.
It was released for 56 hours, the broadcast volume exceeded 100 million, and the box office of single platform in 10 days reached 30.438 million, all indicating that the market of the film was hot. According to Tencent’s video, the mainstream users of online movies on the platform are still mainly young male viewers. However, when we re-read the user data of films such as Ghost Story: Human Love, we found that these films have attracted a lot of young women to watch, which is related to the topic selection of online movies and its excellent production and improvement.
Judging from the movie reviews, there are many sentimental parties among the first audience. The audience base of classic IP has made this film get a lot of invisible dividends. In addition to the ratio of male to female, the number of douban scores of 20,000 people broke the impression that "people who play douban don’t watch the internet, and those who watch the internet don’t go to douban". This also shows that the film has attracted many incremental users outside the original audience circle to watch.
"The first circle is the traditional online movie users or member users. For example, some traditional cinema audiences never watch online movies, but he also watched this film; In addition, the influence, in the past, many films of our online movies stayed in the exchange between peers, but this film may have a greater response in the investment field, including cinema and script fields. " Liu Chaohui, the chief planner and producer, understands the film’s out of the loop.
The remake of classic movies has always been a coexistence of risks and opportunities. In the face of many netizens’ negative comments on casting and acting, Liu Chaohui felt surprised. He believes that "because an online movie is finally facing everyone’s comments with cinema standards." The out-of-circle here may refer more to the intersection of online movie audiences and cinema movie audiences.
"It can’t break the circle, that is, at present, so far, it’s actually not a broken circle movie, because its users’ effective viewing volume is still relatively small compared with the huge cinema audience, but I believe that if its marketing efforts are stronger and the long tail effect is longer, it may become a successful broken circle movie." In an interview with China Film Report, industry insider Liu Xiangyu expressed his personal views.
Because the online movie payment cycle can be as long as six months, the film has a large room for box office growth in the later period. During the epidemic, the lack of May 1st cinema films and the accumulation of audience’s desire to watch movies were also important reasons for the high box office in the early stage.
Where is the comfort zone for online movie investment?
Since its birth in 2014, the mainstream impression of online movies to the outside world was once "poor and rough" and was nailed to the bottom of the contempt chain of the film and television industry by public opinion. In recent years, under the quality of online movies, it is not only the impression of the outside world and the box office, but also the cost. In addition to box office and word of mouth, the 40 million cost of Ghost Story: Human Love is another hot topic among netizens.
According to statistics, from 2014 to now, the cost of online movies has risen from 200,000 to 300,000 to 300,000. At the same time, the highest annual box office has risen from about one million to more than 50 million. So, where is the comfort zone for online movie investment?
"In fact, the higher the investment, the better. For an investment of 8 million to 10 million, its cost performance ratio is the highest, because its box office performance will basically be twice (cost), and its final box office will be 30 million to 40 million." Liu Xiangyu believes that the current investment of 8 million to 10 million in the online movie market is the safest.
At present, "Ghost Story: Human Love" is far from breaking even, and there is still a box office gap of about 5 million. Judging from the current word-of-mouth and box office trend, it is not a problem for the film to return to the original, and it is possible to create a new high in single-platform box office. Compared with "daoist magic", whose network broadcast broke through 53 million box office, its box office has higher gold content. From the perspective of investment, "its investment cost performance is not very high."
The production and marketing costs of the film are both 20 million. According to Liu Chaohui, the original marketing budget of Ghost Story: Human Love was only 5 million, and there were some objections from the team when the budget was increased.
"If we increase our marketing investment by 2 million to bring even 3.5 million benefits, then this kind of investment will last forever." Liu Chaohui explained that the purpose of increasing investment is to increase the marginal benefit of films. As far as the current effect is concerned, the related marketing of social platforms such as Tik Tok and Weibo has promoted the film’s market popularity.
In addition to the box office, high-quality online movies may have broader revenue channels. Liu Chaohui said that more than a dozen teams have come to negotiate the overseas copyright of the film. In addition, it is also possible to sell derivatives around head online movies in the future.
According to the "Insights of Online Movie Users — — According to China Online Movie Market Report in Q1, 2020, in the first quarter of 2020, the online movie box office TOP30 was divided into 430 million, with 23 films with box office exceeding 10 million, an increase of 188% compared with the same period of last year, and the ten million clubs got a box office of 370 million, an increase of 248%.
After years of development, while the quality, cost and sub-account box office of online movies are constantly in line with cinema movies, marketing ideas and revenue channels are also keeping up. The rules of the online movie market are being reshaped, and works that respect the content and audience can be seen by more people.