From the release of the first day of the Chinese New Year to February 7, the cumulative box office of "Bear Haunting and Return to the Earth" in the seven days of release has reached 619 million yuan, ranking fourth in the Spring Festival file. After the box office failure of "City of Figurines" last summer, Huaqiang Fantawild once again proved its strength with the stable performance of "bear haunting". However, a single IP is also a short board for Huaqiang Fantawild. How long will it take for Huaqiang Fantawild to recreate a "bear haunt"?
"Bear Haunting" reproduced the Spring Festival file, and the box office broke 600 million in 7 days
Recently, a set of sci-fi blockbuster animation screenshots with the exclamation of "This is actually a bear haunting", triggering heated discussion among netizens. The animation in the screenshot is the animated movie "Bear Haunting and Return to Earth", which was released on the first day of the Chinese New Year on February 1, which is also the eighth major movie in the "Bear Haunting" series nearly a decade after its launch. According to maoyan professional version data, as of February 7, the cumulative box office of "Bear Haunting and Return to Earth" in the 7 days of release has reached 619 million yuan, ranking fourth in the Spring Festival file.
Animated screenshots with a sci-fi feel. Photo/Screenshot of Weibo
Director Lin Huida revealed that "Bear Haunting and Return to Earth" was conceived from 2019 to 2020, and the creation lasted for nearly two years. Producer Wang Qiang introduced that "Bear Haunting and Return to Earth" has more than 2,000 shots, the number of special effects accounts for 80%, and the number of characters and scenes exceeds 300.
A parent who finished watching the movie told the Beijing News Shell Financial Reporter that although the plot of the film is relatively simple for adults, the children are very happy to watch. Some parents said that taking their children to the cinema to see the "bear haunting" has become a Tradition of the Spring Festival in recent years. "It's nice to have a movie that the whole family watches together during the New Year, and there's a sense of ceremony, and [the bear haunts] until I see my children who aren't interested."
Fantawild Animation, the first producer of "Bear Haunting and Return to Earth", is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Huaqiang Fantawild Culture and Technology Group Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Huaqiang Fantawild"). Through the combination of cultural content and theme parks, Huaqiang Fantawild has become a unique cultural closed-loop enterprise in China that not only covers film and television animation content, cultural derivatives industry, but also includes theme parks, and the "Bear Haunting" launched in 2012 is its representative IP.
Bear Haunting: Return to Earth movie. Picture/Douban screenshot
In addition to the cancellation of the release in 2020 due to the epidemic, the "Bear Haunting" series of movies continues to be launched at a steady pace of one per year, all aimed at the Spring Festival file and becoming "New Year goods" films. According to the data, the total box office of the first seven films in the "Bear Haunting" series has exceeded 3.2 billion. According to Maoyan Professional Edition data, since the launch of the first animated film in 2014, the box office of the "Bear Haunting" series has always maintained a growth trend. Although the release of "Bear Haunting Wild Continent", which was postponed for one year in the Spring Festival file in 2021, was affected by the epidemic and other factors, and the total box office of the 62-day release stopped at 594 million yuan, this year's Spring Festival's "Bear Haunting • Return to Earth" once again proved the strength of the "Bear Haunting" IP with a box office of 619 million yuan in 7 days.
As the first producer, producer and co-distributor of the "Bear Haunting" series of films, Huaqiang Fantawild's year-on-year box office growth has also increased its performance. According to the previously disclosed data, from 2016 to 2018, Huaqiang Fantawild's distribution revenue from the "Bear Haunting" big movie was 41.6063 million yuan, 64.5811 million yuan and 76.0605 million yuan, respectively, and the corresponding three films had box offices of 288 million yuan, 521 million yuan and 606 million yuan, respectively. From 2017 to 2019, huaqiang fantawild's digital animation business revenue also maintained growth, and in the first half of 2021, the revenue of the business increased by 160.3% year-on-year to 207 million yuan.
"City of Figurines" "failed" at the box office, and it is not easy to impress adult audiences
As of May last year, Huaqiang Fantawild has a total of 27 theme parks, and the number of theme park brands has reached 8 so far. With the further development of the "bear haunting" IP, Huaqiang Fantawild is also gradually enriching its theme park projects and improving the park experience by highlighting the "bear haunting". Now, in Tianjin Fantawild Fun World, visitors can fight with animated characters in the project "Bear Haunting Adventure"; in Ningbo Fantawild Oriental God Painting, they can join the animal protection acrobatic troupe with Xiong Da and Xiong Er; in Zhuzhou Fantawild Fantasy Kingdom, visitors can experience the story of protecting forest cedars...
However, under the dazzling achievements of the "Bear Haunting" series, Huaqiang Fantawild has not yet succeeded in creating a second "Bear Haunting".
In 2019, "The Devil Boy of Nezha" refreshed the perception of domestic animation films by domestic audiences with a total box office of 5 billion yuan, and also showed the imagination space of high-quality domestic animation films that have stepped out of the "comfort zone" of children's audiences. In the same year, "Bear Haunting: Primitive Era" grossed 714 million yuan.
In fact, in addition to "bear haunting", Huaqiang Fantawild has long been constantly creating new IP such as "chicken is not good to mess with" and "small worms have great wisdom" and "bear infestation" derivative IP such as "Bear Paradise". But after combing through, it is not difficult to find that among the members of the "Fangte Family", only the audience of the Zodiac Legend series is 8-16 years old teenagers, "Let's Go!" Other members such as Lu Qi, "BearLand", "Bugs have great wisdom", "Chickens are not easy to mess with" and other members are all children under the age of 12.
"The audience of a single IP is relatively narrow and limited, and it is difficult to support the long-term development of a large company." Zhou Mingqi, founder of Jingjian Think Tank, said, "At present, the audience of Huaqiang Fantawild's "Bear Haunting" series is mainly young children, which not only limits the scheduling and schedule of large movies, but also limits the subsequent expansion of IP, for example, the surrounding can only be sold to young children, which is relatively cheap. ”
Huaqiang Fantawild also admitted that although it already has animation brands with certain market influence such as "Bear Haunting", the number is small, and there is still a big gap between IP reserves and international top companies.
In this context, Fantawild Animation's five-year-old Chinese style animation film "City of Figurines" aimed at a wider audience aged 14-30. Film director Ding Liang is a senior vice president of Huaqiang Fantawild, known as the "father of bear haunting"; director Lin Yongchang is a "veteran" in the field of digital animation.
Inspired by the Terracotta Warriors, City of Warriors tells the story of a teenager's adventures and growth, good and evil and choices. Although it is a new attempt, Huaqiang Fantawild has not chosen a safer approach, such as adapting existing characters such as Sun Wukong or choosing works based on the original work. In this way, an original "City of Figurines" was "placed high hopes" by Huaqiang Fantawild. In the previously disclosed prospectus, one of the purposes of Huaqiang Fantawild's fundraising was to obtain the production cost of "City of Figurines".
However, the final performance of "City of Figurines" is hard to describe. According to the plan, "City of Figurines" was supposed to be released in the second half of 2019, but it was eventually postponed to last July. After the release, the market response to "City of Figurines" was not strong, the total box office in the 38 days of release was only 69.854 million yuan, far less than the box office of the "Bear Haunting" series, and the Film's Douban and Cat's Eye scores were 5.8 and 8.7 respectively, which was also inferior to the "Bear Haunting" series. The domestic animation film "White Snake 2 Green Snake Robbery", which was also in the summer file, had a total box office of 557 million yuan when it was released for 38 days. In addition, in the audience evaluation of "City of Figurines", keywords such as "rough narrative" and "old story" are not uncommon.
According to the project plan disclosed by Huaqiang Fantawild in 2019, "City of Figurines" will also launch the second and third parts in 2021 and 2022 respectively, which is the same as the "Bear Haunting" series; the total investment of the two films is 120 million yuan and 150 million yuan, of which Huaqiang Fantawild invests 60 million yuan and 82.5 million yuan, and the total investment amount and company capital are also comparable to the seventh and eighth parts of "Bear Haunting". With the postponement of the release of "City of Figurines" to 2021, how the release time of the next two films will change is also unknown.
In addition, if the investment amount disclosed in the plan is taken as the standard analogy, whether "City of Figurines" with a box office of 62.928 million yuan can achieve profitability should also be marked with a question mark. The Beijing News shell financial reporter called Huaqiang Fantawild on related issues, and the phone was never answered.
Can Huaqiang Fantawild recreate a "bear haunt"?
After a long period of facing children's audiences, the attempt of "City of Figurines" has not brought a blockbuster successful transformation to Huaqiang Fantawild, and Huaqiang Fantawild's box office "carry handle" IP is still "bear haunting". When referring to the shortcomings of its own IP reserves, Huaqiang Fantawild described the reason as "short development time". In the view of industry insiders, on the road of creating IP, Huaqiang Fantawild still has a long way to go.
"Animation is the top creative product in the field of cultural industry, not only the positioning of the consumer market is very important, but also to consider the 'all-you-can-eat' and income model with industrial chain structure." Of course, most of the domestic choice of a direction, such as doing children's animation, looking for the children's market and children's industry. Chen Shaofeng, deputy dean of the Institute of Cultural Industry of Peking University, said, "If you only do children's animation films, you must first start with children's animation TV series, and you have to spend a lot of money to lay the groundwork." ”
According to the incomplete statistics of the Beijing News Shell financial reporter, in the nearly ten years since the birth of the "Bear Haunting" series, Huaqiang Fantawild has launched at least 10 animated series and 8 movies, with more than 500 animation episodes. In order to continue to operate and ensure the popularity of IP, the release of a new movie every year has also become a "compulsory course" for Huaqiang Fantawild.
"In addition, the content of children's animation should be liked by parents and children, otherwise parents will not take their children to buy toys." Chen Shaofeng said, "As far as the mainstream consumers of movies are concerned, it is best to make animation films with young mainstream film consumers as the center, of course, it is better to do 'all-you-can-eat'." ”
In addition, a successful IP is not enough to rely on the accumulation of time alone. "Cultivating a successful IP requires capital costs and opportunity costs in addition to time costs. The 'preservation' of film and television image IP needs to continue to inject new content to continue to attract audiences, it is necessary to continue to shoot sequels and increase investment, which is a business law, even if Hollywood's top IP such as Marvel, DC, Star Wars, etc. are so, then it needs big capital and good commercial interests to support such a sustained investment. Zhou Mingqi said, "In addition, there is also an opportunity cost." High investment does not really pay off, even if the same team, the same class of people will not be able to replicate success. If the positioning of large investment and large production is inaccurate, there may also be a situation of 'water drifting'. There are many other influencing factors, even the epidemic. ”
However, in the eyes of industry insiders, as the only cultural tourism enterprise in China that has realized the closed loop of "own IP + theme park", Huaqiang Fantawild still needs a long time to improve the IP system. Zhou Mingqi said that building a relatively comprehensive IP system with multiple age groups and different positioning is a relatively big challenge for Huaqiang Fantawild in the future. "At present, there is no adult IP in the field of domestic film and television animation that has really come out. One of the advantages of Huaqiang Fantawild is that it has achieved a breakthrough from 0 to 1. Similar companies such as OCT and Sunac are using the '+ real estate' business model to do theme parks, and have not bothered to do IP and content. Film and television animation companies that produce IP also rarely have the strength to do theme parks, or have little perseverance to continuously develop IP. ”
Beijing News shell financial reporter Zheng Yijia
Edited by Li Zheng Proofreader Chen Diyan
Cover image Screenshot of the movie poster