New Tendency in Chinese Commercial Films: The Mainstreaming of Net-Generation IP Movies
With box office revenue arriving at 44 RMB billion in 2015, China’s film industry is without a doubt the fastest around the world. Po Hou and Roger Chung directly predict that China’s box office revenue will reach RMB 2,000 billion by 2020. This achievement will enable China to surpass North America as the new, largest film market in the world.[1]In 2015, the box office of Monster Hunt reached 2.4 billion yuan. In 2016, the box office of the Monkey King Ⅱ hit 1.198 billion yuan. In 2017, the box office of Journey to the West: The Demons Strike Back reached 1.651 billion yuan. In 2018, DETECTIVE CHINATOWN II sales reached 3.197 billion yuan; In 2019, The Wandering Earth box office reached 4.654 billion yuan. Thus, it can be seen that the visualizing of IP has become the mainstream of Chinese films.
The concept of IP film (Intellectual Property Film) refers to the films adapted from original online novels, songs, electronic games with a certain number of fans. This notion is not uncommon in the western film industry. From Marvel Cinematic Universe/ DC Extended Universe to the legendary Harry Potter, Lord of the rings, and warcraft, IP movies are representative. Most films are based on original comics or novels, which can usually construct a complete world view and mature story structure, most of which are independent of the real world, with the characteristic of fantasy, imagination and even epic. By contrast, IP film in China has formed a development trend different from that of western films and formed its own unique mode.
Apart from the Hong Kong classics such as JIN Yong (Louis Cha) and GU Long in the early years, the classical literature such as Dream of The Red Chamber, and a few reproductions in recent years, the IP of Chinese films tends to be grassroots literature, or network literature. Unlike the fantastic stories favored by western ips, most of them focus on the love lives or personal growth of ordinary people.
As early as 2000, China tried to make IP movies and TV shows. The movie Flyin’ Dance is the adaption which is based on its novel of the same name, yet it did not become a craze at the time. Until 2011, the appearance of You Are the Apple Of My Eyes and Love is Not Blind made the mainland market see the advantages and benefits of IP films, which started the boom of IP film in China. The latter, which cost only 8.9 million yuan to make, took in 350 million yuan. At that time, IP movies are characterized by low cost and the Jie Di Qi, which means the common touch in English environment, but in recent years, the development direction of IP movies has shifted. There is a huge amount of online literature flooding into the film market, some of it is about fantasy/magic, but in the final analysis, it is mainly about love stories or personal stories. Even if there are IP works that build an independent world view, in the process of film and television, they are reduced to love stories as the main line. For example, the Jiu Zhou, which is a magnificent IP. It is produced by some writers who complied the histories and created various races. From the perspective of the world view, it is no worse than Harry Potter or the Lord of the rings. But in the films adapted from this IP, all of these grand backgrounds are cut short, only leaving ordinary love stories. Because the characters and the background of the story are far away from the reality, the audience’s emotional resonance in this kind of movie is not as strong as the IP movie with daily life. The setting of the story of this kind of film is high in cost and generally bad in reputation. In order to recover the cost, Chinese IP films have developed their own formula: big-budget + popular stars with huge fan bases. In this model, no matter how bad the movie is, there will always be fans who buy tickets and walk into the theater。Gradually, Chinese IP films have become profit-making commodities on the assembly line of the film industry, instead of mature IP works in the western film industry. Therefore, this paper will analyze why IP movies are popular in China and how they become synonymous with bad movies from those perspectives.
- The influence of IP on movie box office
As for the impact of IP adaptation on the box office, Sood believes that whether a film is adapted from the original IP work is closely related to the financial success of the film.[2] Because the story content of the film is highly inherited from the original IP, the film will inherit the reputation of the original IP to a certain extent, and the audience of the original IP will also have a great possibility to become movie audience. For example, fans of the original novel “ten miles of peach blossom” have become potential audiences for fans of the movie after it is adapted into a movie, which has become a hit on the Internet. Through the judgment of the original IP, the audience will form a psychological expectation for the IP film itself, which will promote the box office of the film.
- Large investment of commercial capital — the film becomes a commodity and needs to recover its cost to create benefits
BAT （Baidu，Tencent，Alibaba）P films become assembly lines, IP films become assembly lines, and films become commercial products for profit。
（For BAT, IP film has the ability of integration from production to distribution, as well as the ability to capture hot spots）：
- Search engine → capture big data analysis to capture popular preferences (themes and stars, actors choose traffic to please the audience)
For example，《Once upon a time》，produced by alibaba pictures, it has adapted popular novels and cast actors with a large fan base.
- BAT has its own literature portal → IP mining and development
- Video portal → have their own broadcast channels → have the audience accustomed to using these platforms, easy to promote。
- The third consumption era has come
- development of second – and third-tier cities. The number of cinemas in second – and third-tier cities increases, and the public’s participation in and choice of movies increases, plus the development of the Internet.
The cultural class of films has shifted from elite culture to mass culture, with a tendency of getting younger.
- Consumption tendency from family to individual, with emphasis on satisfying individual needs, so audience acceptance becomes the guide for film industry.
Therefore, IP movies become a carrier of audience identity. As long as there are fans, IP movies will have a market.
Movie audiences can be divided into fans of the actors and fans of the original IP.
Reference:
Po Hou and Roger Chung, “New Era of China’s Film Industry,” Deloitte Perspectives (2016):49-61.
[1] Po Hou and Roger Chung, “New Era of China’s Film Industry,” Deloitte Perspectives (2016):49-61.
[2] Sood S, Drezee X. Brand Extensions of Experiential Goods: Movie Sequel Evaluations[J]. Journal of Consumer Research, 2006, 33(12): 352-360.
