Chapter 253: A Standout

In August, the 2016 summer season has entered its second half, and several blockbusters have been released one after another, attracting the attention of many moviegoers and film and television media.

Everyone's attention is mainly focused on two duels.

One is "Skiptrace" starring Cheng Long VS "Legend of the Gods" starring Li Lianjie.

These two Chinese action stars once appeared on the same stage in "The Forbidden Kingdom" a few years ago, but that was a cooperative relationship.

This time, it is a direct competition.

Speaking of which, their development trends in recent years are actually somewhat similar.

Since "The Chinese Zodiac" in 2012, Cheng Long's film works in recent years have not been well received.

From "Police Story 2013" to "Dragon Blade", the signature kung fu comedy has decreased, and the scenes of literary drama have increased.

In fact, it is understandable. After all, it is normal for a man in his sixties to change his acting style when he can no longer fight.

Li Lianjie is similar to him. After "Flying Swords of Dragon Gate", he has been wandering in bad movies like "The Detective".

Moreover, his reputation has plummeted in the past two years due to his charity fund and religious issues.

So the competition between the two seems to be quite fair this time.

Both are large-scale productions with hundreds of millions of dollars of investment, and the heroine is the "famous blockbuster vase" Fan Qiaoqiao, and both have signed a 1 billion box office guarantee with the distributor.

"Skiptrace" has Jackie Chan's base, and "Legend of the Gods" has a larger star lineup, so each has its own advantages.

Another showdown is "Detective Chinatown" vs. "Grave Robbers' Chronicles".

In fact, to be honest, it is quite forced to put these two movies together.

Apart from the fact that the release schedules are similar, there is no connection at all.

But it is said that netizens have endless ability to find fun on their own, and they can create connections even if there are no connections.

Arclight Films has issued an announcement before that "Detective Chinatown" belongs to the "Green Ivy Criminal Investigation Universe".

The last drama of the "Green Ivy Series" was "Forensic Qin Ming", and it was also against "Grave Robbers' Chronicles".

Now they are connected all of a sudden.

Many netizens directly joked online, saying that "Meng Bai Da Da" has done nothing else in the past two years, just fighting around "The Lost Tomb".

However, many viewers feel that compared with the last time, Arc Light is under greater competitive pressure this time, because the opponent is "two against one".

Just half a month before the release of "The Lost Tomb", Qiyi TV's web drama "The Mystic Nine" also started broadcasting.

Although the producers are not the same, the web drama and the movie belong to the big IP of "The Lost Tomb", which can be regarded as complementing each other and taking advantage of each other's popularity.

In comparison, "Detective Chinatown" is sandwiched in the middle and looks "lonely".

"It's inexplicable, it's better to compare movies with movies, and they are not even close to web dramas."

In the office, Meng Bai held the phone: "My idea is that we can use the topic of 'competition' for publicity, but we only need to focus on the movie side, and there is no need to bring in other things."

"Just like my idea, it doesn't matter if the audience and netizens have fun on their own, but we can't put the cart before the horse in publicity." Chen Zhixi's voice came from the phone.

"By the way, their first weekend box office should be out, what is the total data?"

"Grave Robbers' Chronicles" was released on August 5, and like "Detective Chinatown", it was chosen to be released on Friday, so the first weekend box office can also be seen.

"According to the current statistics, the total box office for the first three days of the weekend totaled 420 million."

"420 million..." Meng Bai sighed, "More than us." "

Indeed, the lead actor Lu Han is now the top traffic. Before, their distributor said that fans alone can support the basic market of 700 to 800 million, so they directly opened a guaranteed release of 1 billion box office."

"Nonsense? If traffic fans want to boost ratings or playback volume, there is no problem. But for a project like a movie that pays real money for tickets, it is already good to expect fans to support a box office of 200 to 300 million. How can it be that high?"

Meng Bai disagreed with Chen Zhixi's "basic fan base".

"How should I put it? In fact, there is controversy in the industry about how much value "fan traffic" can play in the film market."

Since the entry of Internet capital, many of the traditional film and television market gameplays have been changed, the most typical of which is the "traffic economy."

In the past, celebrities, whether good or bad, had to have two masterpieces in hand.

Only with masterpieces can they gain popularity, and only with popularity can they bring in ratings, and only with ratings can TV stations buy into them, and then monetize them through advertising.

But now it’s different. Internet capital directly produces with film and television companies on the left hand and broadcasts on video platforms on the right hand. If you don’t want to watch it, big data will push it to you directly.

Celebrities have also fully absorbed the style of the kimchi next door, taking the idol route, and monetizing mainly by harvesting fans.

The most typical example is Alibaba.

At the beginning of the year, the newly established Alibaba Pictures announced the establishment of the costume IP "Three Lives Three Worlds Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms" movie, declaring to the outside world that it would not adopt the traditional film and television production model, and everything would be determined by big data.

The screenwriter of the movie was cancelled, and big data was used to screen out the audience's favorite plots and add them in.

The casting does not need to be decided by the director team, and Liu Yifei and Yang Yang, who are most recommended by netizens, were directly selected by big data.

Alibaba Pictures calls this "digitalization of film and television". If it succeeds, the film and television industry will get rid of the past "semi-metaphysical" model, and all success points can be inferred from data.

It can only be said that this kind of "listen to my way" in every field is in line with Alibaba's "stereotype".

The producer of this movie is also Ruyi Pictures. It is currently scheduled to be released next year. Many people in the industry are curious about the result.

Back to now, although the box office performance of "Grave Robbers' Chronicles" in the first weekend far exceeded that of "Detective Chinatown", the ratings are very different.

Three days after its release, Douban's score was only 4.8, which is worse than last year's online drama version.

Many viewers complained in the comment area: "After watching this movie, I even forgave the previous "Nine-story Demon Tower."

Netizens also did what they said. The score of "Nine-story Demon Tower" during its previous broadcast was only 4.3. With the release of "Grave Robbers' Chronicles", it rose to 4.8 in a few days.

It can only be said that the same two pieces will always be more pleasing to the eye if you watch them for a longer time.

With such a bad reputation, passers-by basically forget about it. How much success a movie can achieve now really depends on the support of fans for their "brother".

After the weekend is over and it is back to workdays, the single-day box office of the movie will inevitably decline.

The box office of "Detective Chinatown" on the first working day before dropped to more than 80 million. The decline is within 30%, which is normal.

The decline of "Grave Robbers' Chronicles" is a bit large. The single-day box office on Monday dropped directly to 50 million, which is almost halved compared to the weekend.

This is not over yet. In the following days, the single-day box office continued to drop drastically.

40 million, 30 million, 20 million, until only a few million a day.

On Maoyan Movie, the estimated box office of "Grave Robbers' Chronicles" also dropped from 1.2 billion at the beginning to 700 million.

When the movie was first released, Lu Han's fans happily shouted the slogan "Summer Box Office Champion", thinking that the movies of the same period were all rubbish.

"Please don't force the fans of Detective Chinatown to take advantage of the popularity. We are not on the same level at all." This was a popular saying in the fan circle at the beginning.

Unfortunately, with the decline of the box office growth of The Lost Tomb, these shoutings are no longer heard.

The fans who had ridiculed the movie before deleted their posts and ran away, just pretending that nothing had happened.

In contrast, the performance of Detective Chinatown is as stable as an old dog.

After half a month of release, the cumulative box office has reached 760 million. The decline is within the normal range, and there is still an increase of 30 to 40 million every day.

According to this trend, it is almost certain that the total box office will exceed 1 billion. Maoyan also estimated the total box office to be 1.1 billion.

The competition between Detective Chinatown and The Lost Tomb is basically over, while the "Long-Li dispute" on the other side ended earlier.

Big Brother Cheng is indeed Big Brother Cheng. As a "scenery film called an action film", "Skiptrace" relied on the appeal of Cheng Long to get a box office of nearly 500 million.

The Legend of the Gods was much worse. After getting 100 million yuan at the box office on the first day of its release, it plummeted to less than 20 million yuan on the second day.

The Douban score was only 2.7, which can be called the worst of the year.

Although the cast is strong, the casting is very sloppy.

Li Lianjie plays Jiang Ziya, Huang Xiaoming plays Yang Jian, Louis Koo plays Shen Gongbao, Xu Qing plays Taiyi Zhenren...

It can be said that except for Fan Qiaoqiao's Daji, the rest of the characters are more abstract than each other.

The audience who were deceived into the theater complained that this movie was clearly made by Xiang Huaqiang in order to promote his son Xiang Zuo.

Some viewers also suspected that the distributor dared to guarantee a box office of 1 billion for such a bad movie. Is it money laundering?

Although it has not yet been finalized, the total box office of this movie is estimated to be difficult to exceed 200 million.

Needless to say, the distributor must have suffered huge losses. And the producers Bona and China Star did not make any money either. After all, the production cost was more than 400 million, and it would still be a loss even with a guarantee.

At this point, the movie market in the second half of the summer season has changed from "four strong contenders" to "one outstanding one".

The audience's discussion has also gradually shifted from which movie is better to "Detective Chinatown".

The current situation is very good. The next step is to wait for the final results to come out. Several producers have even begun to prepare for the celebration banquet.

Meng Bai also slowly shifted his energy from movies to the casting preparations for the next "Day and Night Chase" and the launch of "The Lost Tomb" next month.

It was at this time that he suddenly received a call from Chen Sicheng.

"Hey, Meng Bai, are you in Jingbei now?"

"Yes." Meng Bai looked at the casting list in his hand and joked, "Can't wait to start celebrating in advance?"

However, Chen Sicheng did not respond to his joke, and said in a dull tone, "Something happened here. If you are not busy now, can you come to my place?"

Hearing the other party's serious tone, Meng Bai couldn't help asking, "Why, senior brother, you didn't go out to whore and got caught?"

"Bullshit, when was I caught? No, when did I go to whore?" Chen Sicheng said speechlessly, "It's not me who is in trouble, it's Baoqiang... Tsk, anyway, come over first and talk about it."

(End of this chapter)