Author / Tank
"Avatar" parachuted this Friday, indeed exceeded the expectations of almost all industry insiders.
Yesterday afternoon, on the China Film Data Information Network under the State Film Special Funding Office, the number of "Avatar" was suddenly updated, predicting that the film would soon be finalized.
And just when almost everyone thinks that even if "Avatar" is finalized, it will not be released until April or as early as next Friday. The news that the film will be officially re-released this week began to expand on the Major Film WeChat communities, Weibo, and forums, and with the official announcement of China Film News at about 8 p.m., the news of the film's parachute landing on Friday was finally determined.
It's been a full half year since the last Hollywood classic was re-released, so why did Avatar land so quickly? What changes will the airborne landing of "Avatar" bring to the mainland film market? Will there be more re-screenings of classic films in the coming months? While waiting for the official poster of Avatar to be released, let's answer these questions first.
Why the bailout?
Large market low.
The continuous absence of imported films and the prohibitiveness of large-scale domestic films have together constituted the embarrassing situation of the current cold period in March and April.
Although the single-day box office of Women's Day remained at 100 million+, the next day the market immediately dived, and yesterday the box office reported only 42 million, which may also be the highest working day in the next three weeks. Before the release of "Godzilla vs King Kong" on March 26, the mainland film market will also fall into the situation of "no film to put", and even the March market will continue to explore the single-month freezing point of 1.8 billion yuan in November last year.
Considering the special environment of this year, Hollywood's A-level projects in the first half of 2021, especially in the first quarter, have basically been postponed, and only 1 film is currently scheduled for March 26, and half of the films have lasted for more than half a year without publicity action, whether they can be successfully released and introduced to the mainland is still a suspense.
It is certain that the film bureau is not satisfied with the current Schedule environment in March, and if March can achieve growth compared with 2019, it will be of great significance to the entire film market, and the re-screening of Hollywood classics is also the most convenient resource to mobilize. We also mentioned in the previous article that the reason why many classic re-screening films were not released uniformly when they resumed work last year is to avoid such a situation as March-April this year, if the market continues to decline, and there is a lack of heavyweight domestic fixing, release 1-2 heavyweight re-screenings to stimulate the market, so that the market smoothly transitions to May 1, which is also the significance of re-screenings for the market.
In addition, completing this year's box office results is also a KPI task that the Film Bureau hopes to complete. Although the Spring Festival file has created a record box office high, this year's annual box office market will probably recover to 60 billion + results, but for whether it can exceed the historical high of 64.266 billion in 2019, the current performance of the cold schedule in March alone, as well as the list of films to be screened, the opportunity is relatively slim. This is also one of the reasons why the film bureau hopes to bring more new films, especially new films with a volume of more than 100 million to save the market.
Why Avatar?
On January 4, 2010, "Avatar" was released in the mainland, and "Avatar", which was released for several months, finally achieved a staggering box office performance of 1.36 billion, which increased the box office record of mainland film history by 2.6 times, not including all kinds of data concealed by theaters and systems at that time. This is the third time that James Cameron's directorial works have introduced Chinese mainland, and it is also the third time to break the mainland box office record, and the box office performance of 1.36 billion yuan has maintained the position of the box office champion in the history of mainland films for many years, until it was surpassed by "Transformers 4" four years later.
In fact, as early as March last year, when the mainland film market resumed work for the first time, there was constant news that "Avatar" was ready to be re-screened. In addition, after the official resumption of work in the mainland film market in July last year, "Avatar" and "Interstellar" and "Inception" were all in the re-screening list, and even once online rumors were set in mid-September, but then it was lost. With the box office of the National Day file, the New Year file and the Spring Festival file, most people have forgotten the existence of the re-screening of "Avatar".
However, as a heavyweight champion in the history of mainland films, North American film history, and global film history, the re-release of "Avatar" also has a very high box office potential, and at a time when the market is in urgent need of blockbuster restart, it is also likely to achieve a box office of 500 million+ or even a higher performance. It can be said that among all the Hollywood classic re-screening films, "Avatar" is the only work with such a large volume.
Although it has not yet been officially announced (20th Century Pictures has not yet released a final poster), the popularity of the re-screening of the film yesterday afternoon has exploded, and the weibo hot search has even rushed to the third place, which is also the best performance of imported films in the past six months.
Of course, two and a half days in advance, it also means that the copy can only start to be sent to the whole country this afternoon, whether it is SF Express or human flesh express copy, this time will be doomed to not be able to get synchronous treatment for all movie theaters in the country, and it will also bring certain harm to the first day of the film's performance. In particular, it is uncertain whether the IMAX copy can be in place on Friday, so most second- and third-tier city cinemas may not dare to open the pre-sale of the IMAX hall at the first time, which will also have a certain impact on the pre-sale of the film.
In addition, the current global film history box office champion "Avengers 4" is only 7 million US dollars more than the global box office of "Avatar", which also means that after the film is re-released in the Chinese mainland, "Avatar" will once again surpass "Reunion 4" and regain its global box office crown from 2010 to 2019. According to tradition, "Avengers 4" will re-issue congratulatory posters to celebrate "Avatar" winning the championship, which is also a major highlight of the week.
Re-screenings will remain an important complementary part of the future market
In addition to "Avatar", the Russian World War II movie "Persian Language Lesson" is set for March 19 and the Japanese animation film "Working Cell" is scheduled for April 9, jointly enriching the mainland box office market. In the face of the current schedule of March and April, it is rumored that Hollywood classic blockbusters, including "The Lord of the Rings Trilogy", are also expected to be re-released in the mainland in the follow-up.
In recent years, the film market has indeed had several re-screenings of classic films, with good results. Hayao Miyazaki's "Totoro" was successfully introduced to the mainland, which is also the first film produced by Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli to be released in the mainland since the new century, and the film has won 170 million yuan at the box office in China and has been widely welcomed by audiences. For a movie from 30 years ago, it's a rarity.
In the more than a year after "Totoro", "Spirited Away", "The Pianist at Sea" and "Beautiful Life" were released one after another, all of which achieved good box office results.
Re-screenings, literally meaning films that have been released before, are re-screened. If it is a re-screening film in a narrow definition, it must be a film that has been released in Chinese mainland, and if it is broadened to a broad understanding, in fact, as long as it is a film with a history of 3 years or more, it has the meaning of re-screening, and films such as "Totoro" and "The Pianist at Sea" that have achieved good box office results in the mainland also belong to this category.
Allowing excellent films to be re-screened in theaters and return to the public's vision, at the moment when the number of film sources is not sufficient, it not only meets the needs of some film fans and audiences, but also can have a good box office, which is also a win-win situation for the mainland film market. At present, the six major Hollywood companies also have a lot of re-screening resources, such as Disney's Marvel series, Warner's "The Matrix", "The Hobbit" and "The Dark Knight" series, Sony's "Spider-Man" series, Universal's "Fast and Furious", "Jurassic" series and Paramount's "Forrest Gump" and "Transformers" series. The above as many as more than 30 Hollywood re-screening films, all have a box office volume of 50 million or even 100 million +, choose in March-April, September, November and other domestic films are relatively scarce slots, release 1-2 per week, can effectively regulate the domestic film sea, but also effectively reduce the number of days below 50 million in a single day.