The domestic film market has been improving every year since it was commercialized.
It turns out that two popular blockbusters appeared in the same schedule, and the competition was already very fierce.
In 2007, the two tigers "Assembly Number" and "Tou Mingzhuang" competed, pushing the Lunar New Year festival to its peak.
But in 2008, the competition became even more intense. This year, it can no longer be described as intense. It is simply too brutal.
In November alone, "2012", "Living Together" and "Mulan", the appetizers of this Lunar New Year stall are even more popular than previous Lunar New Year stalls.
Not to mention the four movies "A Perfect World", "Three Guns", "The Tomb Raider" and "The Storm 2" were all released within seven days.
However, the two great directors Jay Chou and Aaron Kwok were completely defeated by the two great directors Li Qian and Zhang Yimou. In the domestic film market, the appeal of directors is much stronger than that of actors.
Not to mention the huge gap in word-of-mouth between the four movies, "The Tomb" has almost been booked as the best bad movie of the year.
Originally, the previous films "The Secret" and "Initial D" allowed Jay Chou to successfully establish himself in the film industry. Even the director of this film, Zhu Yanping, said privately that even if Jay Chou did nothing, he would still be in the film industry.
Standing on stage for 90 minutes can make tens of thousands of fans scream for 90 minutes.
Although it's a bit outrageous, I really thought it was MJ. On the midfield stage of the super watch more than ten years ago, he stood motionless on the stage for a minute and a half, like a king, greeting the cheers of nearly 100,000 spectators.
However, it is too easy for Jay Chou to make fans scream for more than an hour at a concert.
But on the big screen, it's hard to tell. After all, not all the people watching the movie are his fans.
Even many of Jay Chou's fans didn't say the movie was good.
Lin Chi-ling is always cooing, Jay Chou is always being stupid, Chen Daoming is always showing off, and Eric Tsang is always looking for a fight. This movie can be described in four sentences.
From the actors to the plot, there is almost no aspect that has not been criticized.
In the movie, Lin Zhiling is still an online writer who was urged to write a manuscript. At the end, he wrote his own experience into an adventure. Qidian has put out a wave of advertisements, and the southern uncle Sanshu will adapt the movie and publish it on Qidian.
Jay Chou was ridiculed before its release. Although it had only been released for a few days, it was basically like that. Jay Chou had lost all the reputation he had accumulated from his previous films in one fell swoop.
"Feng Yun 2" is not much better. The 25 million in the first weekend is not as good as the 29 million of "The Tomb".
Aaron Kwok is still not as attractive as Jay Chou and Lin Chiling, a combination of handsome men and beautiful women.
But the better thing is that "Wind and Cloud 2" at least has an outstanding aspect, and the special effects are well done.
The style is somewhat similar to "300". It is said that after three years of work, some key renderings are already very close to "300".
However, the cost is still less, and in some places that are not rendered much, the gap is too big.
Moreover, the plot is weak and lengthy, and the whole movie is just a slap in the face.
Two large-scale productions costing 100 million yuan inevitably became cannon fodder.
Although "Three Shots Surprise" received 88 million in five days, it completely failed to achieve the reputation of the national master.
Word-of-mouth is also highly polarized. No matter how Zhang Yimou's movie is made, there are always some people who will try their best to see some truth in it, and some people are really amused.
However, the difference between these two extremes is a bit big, not 50-50, but at most 28-80.
Some good reviews were mixed in with the overwhelming criticism, but not much could be seen at all.
Brother Cheng Kai's ex-wife Hong Huang scolded Zhang Yimou for being despicable. Han Han gave the movie a score of one and said that "Three Guns" was only worthy of being shown in the county town. It is understandable that some public figures do not give face to scold Zhang Yimou.
However, Zhang Weiping still looked arrogant. No matter who criticized "Three Guns", they would say that the other person was envious and jealous of the success of "Three Guns".
The original target was 400 million. According to this standard, 88 million in five days would definitely not be a big hit. Faced with doubts about the box office, Zhang Weiping also took matters into his own hands.
...
Sweeping three blockbusters was within Li Qian's expectation. After all, he had seen all three movies and knew what level he was in.
But he didn't have the time to care about others, he was already busy enough.
All the way south from Beijing, various promotional activities continued.
Moreover, since the topic of children's education and family parent-child relationship has become popular, there have been many exclusive interviews from TV stations and print media, killing a lot of brain cells.
Moreover, there is another trouble behind him. Liu Yong, the founder of Grava, a movie scheduling website he invested in in April, followed him all the way from Shanghai and wanted to invest in it.
"Mr. Liu, eight months have passed. Grava has made almost no progress, either in business or in the market. It is impossible for me to invest in you anymore." Li Qian looked helplessly at Liu Yong who was struggling to explain.
.
In eight months, 1.5 million was spent.
It doesn't matter if you run out of money. In the entrepreneurial stage, you just have to burn money. If you have the ability to burn more, that's a good thing.
But after all the money has been burned, there must be progress. When we arrived at Grava, we couldn't hear a sound at all.
It was originally just a movie ranking website limited to some movie theaters in Shanghai. Eight months later, it spent all 1.5 million, and it is still a movie scheduling website limited to some movie theaters in Shanghai.
It’s just that the website has access to a little more cinemas and an online ticket booking service.
For this online ticket booking, Grava buys tickets from the theater at the original price and then resells them to the user at the original price.
Then Grava employees will distribute tickets at the movie theater, and users can go to the employees to get them.
Primitive, cumbersome, expensive and laborious.
That's all. Liu Yong never thought about continuing to expand the market. All he thought about was improving the existing user experience.
How can the existing conditions be improved? Users place an order online, and then someone will be waiting for you in the cinema with the ticket on time. This is equivalent to hiring a free butler who specializes in buying tickets.
No matter what he said, Li Qian would not give him a cent.
Although millions are nothing, he won't do anything like throwing it into the water.
"Director Li, we have ideals, so the name Grava is really not chosen randomly."
Liu Yong couldn't explain why and reiterated his ideals repeatedly.
It's still ideal, and the angel round is still talking about the ideal. Almost a year has passed, the first tranche of funds has been burned, and we are still talking about the ideal.
People with real ideals are scary and a double-edged sword.
There is no need to think about the future development of Grava. From the working style of the founder Liu Yong, Li Qian can predict that Grava will either die from competition among his peers or be kicked out.
However, in any emerging industry, time is particularly important. A small step ahead is a huge lead.
Seeing that it was almost done, after delaying for several days, Li Qian said, "Mr. Liu, if you want me to continue investing, it's not impossible."
Before Liu Yong could become happy, Li Qian changed his mind.
"But, I have two requests."
"Director Li, just say it." Liu Yong didn't even think about it.
"I heard that in the past few months, eight cinemas under the Jiangsu and Zhejiang Times Cinemas Line have launched online seat selection and self-service ticket collection services. From selecting cinemas, movies, quantities, seats, to order confirmation, the full set of online ticket booking operations are available in
It will be resolved within 10 seconds. Then just go to the automatic ticket machine in the corresponding theater with the order number to collect the tickets before the movie starts.
I hope that this money can be used for the production of online ticket purchasing programs, the purchase and placement of offline ticket machines, and we will first copy the process of Times Cinema, and then optimize it after the details.
Then, within half a year, I want to see Grava promote online seat selection and ticket booking and offline self-service ticket collection in the top ten cities in the country. Within a year, I want to see Grava in all second-tier cities across the country.
self-service ticket machines.”
"I'm afraid this will be difficult to do."
Liu Yong was a little confused, "I also know this. Even Times Cinemas has only installed ticket machines for eight of its cinemas. If you apply for a VIP card, you can buy and collect tickets by yourself throughout the process, but one ticket machine is not enough."
If it is customized in large quantities, it will cost seven to eight thousand units, and it will be a huge expense to cover the whole country, not to mention the need to connect to the ticket purchase system, which requires coordination between cinemas and system suppliers."
"It's your business, Mr. Zhang, to get the movie theaters and several system suppliers. Don't worry about the funds. In the early stage, you don't need to put them in every movie theater. Based on the population and box office of more than 30 second-tier and above cities, draw a map
Region, just make sure that there is at least one cinema in an area that has installed the machine. As for the scope of this area, it depends on the situation."
In the early stages of starting a business, whether to gain market first or improve service quality first is a question that all entrepreneurs must face.
For Liu Yong, he prefers to focus on service quality, but if he doesn't agree to Li Qian's request, he won't pay.
Without money, all ideals are in vain.
Li Qian, who had already invested money, was unwilling to continue investing money, and he did not have the confidence to find other investors.
But even if you agree, you won’t get any money. You have to come up with a detailed and feasible plan before the money can be released.
It’s tiring. As an investor, you still have to formulate the company’s strategic development direction.
I don’t know when Maoyan was founded. Judging from the frequency of overseas appearances in movies and TV series in my memory, it is obvious that in this emerging industry, this company called Maoyan is definitely one of the biggest winners.
Compared to this unreliable founder, Li Qian is more willing to invest in a company destined to succeed.
However, as the first to take advantage of the situation, Grava should be fine in the short term. This investment will definitely be profitable. At worst, he will sell his shares and run away with the money to invest in Maoyan.
...
After dealing with one annoying thing, I still have to continue promoting the movie.
Although the movie's reputation and popularity are very high, we can't sit idle. Even if we want to take a break, we have to wait until "October Siege" is released. If the situation is stable, it will be enough to end the promotion early.
In the following two working days, due to the half-price day on Tuesday, the box office increased. "A Perfect World" earned 23.3 million in two days, and a total of 34.1 million in the first three days of the second week.
"Three Shots" received 18.1 million in two days. Zhang Weiping's marketing is still very good. In the past few days, almost all the popular domestic programs have been aired.
The star-studded "October Siege" was released on Thursday. Under the pressure of four blockbusters, it took in 13 million at the box office on the first day.
Compared with this lineup, the box office of 13 million is undoubtedly not enough.
But after all, there are few films scheduled, and Chen Kexin's box office appeal is obviously not as good as Zhang Yimou and Li Qian.
Several other movies have also been affected to varying degrees, but "A Perfect World" is still strong. The film schedule has never been enough and it is not saturated at all. It still received 11.5 million at the box office.
"Three Shots" only made exactly 7 million.
However, the reputation of "October Siege" is much stronger than that of "Three Guns". This somewhat tragic film, except for some teasing about asking the leader to leave first, and some questioning of excessive sensationalism, has received almost unanimous praise.
In the next three days, "October Siege" saw its film schedule increase to 33% due to word-of-mouth from the audience. It earned 48 million in three days, and a total of 61 million in the first four days of the weekend.
Although it is lower than "Three Guns", there are no new films in the future, and the reputation is very good, but the future is still uncertain.
"Perfect World" didn't lose much during the three-day weekend schedule. Regarding attendance, it earned 45.2 million in three days and a total of 89.8 million in the third week.
Three weeks after its release, the total box office in 18 days reached 310.7 million.
It broke 300 million in 18 days, but it failed to surpass the record of "The Founding of a Republic" which broke 300 million in 17 days. After all, "Perfect World" faced many more opponents.
And "Three Guns" has already dropped almost half of its film schedule in just four days, directly from 37% to 20%, and earned 27 million in three days.
A total of 61.4 million was taken in the second week, and the total box office in the 11 days of release was 140 million.
It's not as good as "The Golden Jacket" in 2006. Zhang Weiping's original expectations of a box office of 400 million were also beaten in the face.
"The Tomb Raider" and "The Wind and Cloud 2", two brothers in trouble, received 15 million and 13 million respectively in the second week, with a total box office of 44 million and 38 million respectively.
Zhang Weiping was really right, these two movies have a box office of 50 to 60 million.
All the movies in 2009 have been released on the big screen, and the remaining three or two kittens are insignificant.
It is already very clear. "Perfect World" has exceeded 300 million in 18 days and has already won 310.7 million. You can book this year's Lunar New Year champion in advance.
The only suspense is between "Three Guns" and "October Siege", who can become the second biggest winner in the Lunar New Year movie.
However, no matter who is higher than whom, I am afraid that this situation has not met their expectations.
All parties are working harder and harder to promote the movie. It can be said that they are like eight immortals crossing the sea, each showing their magical powers.
Zhang Weiping used his ultimate move again and started spraying directly.
The target is of course the most direct and biggest rival of "Three Guns", "October Siege".
However, not only "October Siege", Han Sanping was also criticized.
"Zhang Weiping denounced Han Sanping for suppressing "Three Guns", arranging "2012" and "October Siege" to attack each other, and ignoring the audience's voice and market demand, forcibly cutting the film schedule of "Three Guns"..."
"Zhang Weiping angrily criticized Han Sanping for cultivating a personality and monopolizing the market, acting like a mountain eagle cultivating a personality and bringing the film industry into a state of chaos."
...
"Tsk tsk...you really dare to say that with such a big mouth."
It was late at night, and Li Qian was stunned when he saw the news reports from the West China Metropolis Daily online.
Actors, directors, production companies, publicity companies, theaters, theater chains, Zhang Weiping has scolded the entire industry, but to his surprise, he finally turned on Han Sanping.
If this continues, the next step will be to scold Optoelectronics, and the next step will be to scold the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Propaganda.
However, many people have done this kind of thing like criticizing Optoelectronics, criticizing the government. For the film industry, blaming Optoelectronics for problems is perfectly normal.
But you can only criticize Optoelectronics. If you name and curse the boss of Optoelectronics, you don’t know how you will die.
I just don’t know if Zhang Weiping is just being clever or if he is really smart.