Industry: The IP of take-away is heading towards dusk, and the original creation should be the direction of pursuit

"When communicating with others, if you don't talk about IP, it seems that you can't get in this circle." Recently, at an exchange conference for content entrepreneurs, Xu Yangbin, president of Entertainment Cat Technology, exposed a strange phenomenon in the current domestic film and television industry. However, the IP that many people in the film and television industry talk about is not original IP, but adapted IP. This kind of IP is destroying China's film market.

Original title: Take-away doctrine in IP is destroying China's film market.

"When communicating with others, if you don't talk about IP, you can't get around in this circle." Recently, at an exchange conference for content entrepreneurs, Xu Yangbin, president of Entertainment Cat Technology, exposed a strange phenomenon in the current domestic film and television industry. However, the IP that many people in the film and television industry talk about is not original IP, but adapted IP. This kind of IP is destroying China's film market.

Xu Yangbin is a senior film and television person. He once served as a senior executive of DreamWorks Films in the United States in China and president of Aofei Media. His newly founded Entertainment Cat Technology is one of the most leading entertainment IP derivative operators in China, leading the operations of many film and television entertainment front-line derivative industries such as the movies "Return of the Great","Hunger Games 3" and "Tomb Robber Notes". Although he is also engaged in IP operations, Xu Yangbin really does not agree with the IP that industry people are talking about. "Eight years ago, I had an in-depth exchange with Hollywood movie magnate Harvey Weinstein. According to statistics from some boring media, Weinstein was thanked more than five times at the Hollywood awards ceremony than God. However, even such a top boss in the film industry did not talk about IP when chatting with me. He only emphasized that good movies must have magic and vitality."

The IP of the film and television industry is a word invented by China. Two or three years ago, the word IP appeared in China's film and television industry. Last year, the film and television entertainment industry suddenly became a hot topic for investment, and IP also became a hot word. Then, many industry insiders kept mentioning IP. However, what exactly is IP?

If you don't dwell on the legal meaning and simply understand it, IP is intellectual property. But before creating a film and television work, no one knows whether it will become an IP. If you create a new theme, it may be a hit three years later, or it may be unknown after three years. In other words, originality is a high-risk and low-yield thing. Therefore, what industry insiders call IP has become adaptations and cross-border from other art categories. For example, adaptations of online novels, adaptations of comics, and adaptations of song titles, such as the online novel "Tomb Robbing Notes" and the songs "You at the Table" and "Gardenia Blooming" were all adapted into movies of the same name.

IP itself is innocent, but this kind of "take-away" IP is guilty of treating adaptation as the mainstream of IP. It is having a very bad impact on the film market.

Disrupting the order of film and television investment

The first negative impact of IP-only theory is that it disrupts the order of film and television investment.

China's film industry has roughly gone through three stages: 1. The stage with directors and screenwriters as the core. You can recall that more than ten years ago, if you wanted to go to the movies, you would probably say,"This is Zhang Yimou/Feng Xiaogang's movie, which is worth seeing";2. Superstars from all over the Taiwan Strait and three places gathered, and five or six years ago, the film's promotion particularly liked to emphasize this point;3. The stage with IP as the core.

With IP as the core, what kind of market changes will it bring? It is a change in investor mentality. Originally, investors would judge whether a movie can become a hit based on the level of screenwriter, director, actor and photographer and the way it is promoted and distributed. Now, as film and television has become a hot spot for investment, many cross-border investors have come in. Now, these cross-border investors don't understand this industry much and cannot grasp the pulse of this industry. Therefore, he only depends on whether you can become an IP-IP is much simpler than the operating logic of the film and television industry. This simple and crude judgment method forces many film and television makers to weave an illusory coat of "IP" and then fool investors.

But Xu Yangbin said: "In fact, if you look at the performance of China's film market in the past two years, you will find that IP has not brought a 100% success rate. On the contrary, the probability of failure for so-called 'IP' is increasing."

Destroying original talents

Why does the failure rate increase when there are IP works? Because most of these IPs are IP adaptations, the quality itself is not high.

After cross-border investors enter the film market, filmmakers will encounter a very embarrassing situation when they go to talk to investors. You said that your team is particularly awesome, has done many awesome works, and will definitely make money in the future, but can you guarantee it? Why should investors trust you? They neither understand nor verify it. But if you say to investors: "We have copyrights for adaptations of 30 novels and copyrights for adaptations of 30 comics." Then investors will say, I understand this business logic, so I will vote for you.

As a result, gradually, film and television companies with a particularly utilitarian mind will feel that I need to master a large amount of IP. You must first buy the adaptation rights of a batch of novels and comics in order to open up a situation in this market. This is a negative incentive.

Therefore, IP-only theory is destroying original talents. Go and see what many excellent screenwriters are doing nowadays? I'm using online novels to change movie scripts! I am writing a script based on the name of the song, but what does the content of that script have to do with this song? There are also many directors who are reading online novels for inspiration. On the other hand, even screenwriters who make adaptations are being destroyed. According to industry insiders, many scripts were written by unknown screenwriters at the bottom, but the names of the big screenwriters were signed. Then, the profits were basically divided among those big screenwriters. At present, China's screenwriters basically do not make money, only the top few screenwriters are making money.

Now, cross-border IP is basically impossible to dig. For example, there is no room for adaptation of Jin Yong's novels. But the irony is that on the one hand, many directors and screenwriters complain about "how to adapt online novels into movies". They scratch their ears and cheeks during the creative meeting, and in the end, they can only use stars to make up for them; on the other hand, they desperately talk to investors. People say: "Look, our novel is good. We have hundreds of millions of readers, and it will definitely be a hit."

What happens if original talent is destroyed? Just like planting fruit trees, you don't plant trees in your own garden, but go directly to other people's trees and pick peaches. When you need to plant your own one day, you may not even know how to plant trees.

The destruction of original talents by profit-oriented IP is even the case in Hollywood. Xu Yangbin said that his old club DreamWorks had many excellent original works, but it was still difficult to persist. "Many original Hollywood teams are also being influenced and changed little by little."

Lower the audience's appreciation level

In addition, IP is cutting the audience's brain. We can imagine that a few years later, people can only see movies based on various online novels and song titles in cinemas. What kind of scene would it be like?

On IMDb, the world's most authoritative film rating website, the highest-rated film is "Shawshank Redemption". But let's try to imagine that in today's China film market, will the box office be good if "Shawshank Redemption" is shown? No one can say it will be popular. This is a very cruel situation. Movies that are adapted from IP adaptations are shaping everyone's preferences for movies, and the current film market is not benign.

But Xu Yangbin believes that we don't have to be too pessimistic, because "there are still many colleagues who insist on making original films." Last year,"Monster Hunt", which set a new box office record for China films,"Mermaid", which set a new box office record again during this year's Spring Festival, and "Return of the Great Sage" last summer are all good original works."

The real charm of IP lies in its ability to move people's hearts for a long time

. Xu Yangbin repeatedly quoted Harvey Weinstein and emphasized: "A good movie must have magic and vitality."

Magic is to move people's hearts. Go to the cinema and watch a movie, and you may immediately praise it: "Wow, this movie is really good." "I really didn't expect that I could still take pictures like this." This is magic.

What is vitality? You turn on your computer and discover that this movie from ten years ago is still so good. Or, there is a movie whose first season was released ten years ago, and you still want to see it for the second season this year. This is vitality.

To have magic and vitality, you must be able to impress people's hearts for a long time. The real charm of an IP lies in its ability to impress people's hearts for a long time. How can we move people's hearts in a lasting manner? Adhere to originality. Someone said: "It seems to be an option to let a small number of people make original IP and most of us make purported IP. After all, the latter comes faster." However, Xu Yangbin proposed a "market pulling effect" to refute this view.

What is the "market pulling effect"? Take the popular movies last summer as an example."Return of the Great Sage" and "Monster Hunt" were all released in the same schedule, but there was no vicious competition. Instead, the entire box office was pulled up. Looking at this year's summer season, China box office figures in July were 20% lower than last year. The number of screens of movies is increasing, but the box office is declining. The most important reason is that this year's summer movies did not show a "market pulling effect". If we do not insist on originality, in the end, a small amount of original IP will be drowned out by those profit-oriented IP, and no excellent works will appear. This is the large-scale pulling effect.

Xu Yangbin believes that the IP of altruism is "heading for dusk" and it is time to reflect. In the future, all filmmakers should regard the original creation as the direction they pursue, and use magic and vitality as the criteria for judging a film. "If this is the standard, maybe China will have its own Cameron and its own Spielberg in the future."

Editor: yvette