Changing the name to "Wanda Film" will promote the online theater industry or make major changes?

In addition, according to Zeng Maojun, Wanda will launch the Time Online Theater Line within the year. The main profit model will be a split account model and a new ticketing platform will be established. In recent years, with the large number of Internet users, how to further tap the waste heat of traditional theater movies through the Internet has increasingly become the next outlet.

As early as the end of March, Wanda Cinema Line issued an announcement, planning to change the company's Chinese name from "Wanda Cinema Line Co., Ltd." to "Wanda Film Co., Ltd.", and the company's securities abbreviation is also planned to be changed from "Wanda Cinema Line" to "Wanda Film".

Finally, on April 21, Wanda Cinema held a shareholders 'meeting, which reviewed and approved relevant proposals such as changing the name of "Wanda Cinema" to "Wanda Film". Since then, Wanda's films have finally become "legitimate", and the much-watched Wanda's name change has also been put to a real conclusion.

As for the reasons for the name change, Wanda has already given the answer in the announcement:

First, in order to continuously improve market competitiveness and accelerate the company's development, the company has taken the lead in proposing a "member" development strategy in China since its listing to create a film life ecosystem. At present, the company has formed diversified business segments such as film screening, film advertising media, film integrated marketing, film derivatives sales, and online live broadcast platforms. The proportion of non-box office revenue has exceeded one-third of operating income. The "film life ecosystem" that the company strives to create has been basically formed, and the company's current name can no longer fully reflect the company's business status.

Second, the company's future development strategy is to continuously innovate operations, integrate the resources of the film industry chain, and continue to promote the construction of the company's film life ecosystem. The company plans to adjust its organizational structure and eventually build five business platforms: theater terminal platform, media marketing platform, film and television IP platform, online business platform, and movie and game interactive platform, strengthening the company's core competitive advantages in the film industry and realizing the company's long-term, sustained and stable development.

As an industry leader, Wanda's every move has attracted much attention. In recent years, Wanda has never stopped rapidly expanding its territory through "buy, buy", and this upgrade from "theater line" to "movie" is also Wanda's new positioning and re-layout in the film industry. Some industry insiders said that behind Wanda's name change is its ambition to open up upstream and downstream theaters business, lay out the entire industry chain, and then dominate the film industry.

From theaters to movies, Wanda's "Film Life Ecosystem" model is first emerging?

Since 2016, the film market has become increasingly sluggish, and it has been difficult to meet the profit needs of film investment companies solely by relying on box office revenue from film screenings. In response, a large number of film investment companies have begun to focus on cross-border marketing and continuously integrate effective resources. In order to increase the non-ticket revenue of theaters and maximize the benefits of theaters. Wanda Theater Line is certainly unwilling to be inferior.

Zeng Maojun once said: "The slowdown in the growth of the film industry in April last year was an inflection point in the development of the box office market. Wanda Cinema realized that driven by content, there is a ceiling for future films (box office), so it is necessary to carry out layout outside the box office., grasp the offline traffic of movies, and strengthen non-box office revenue."

It is understood that in 2016, Wanda vigorously expanded its business in the fields of advertising media, film integrated marketing, derivatives and other fields. From this perspective, the significant increase in its non-ticket business is a matter of course.

Looking at the 2016 annual report of Wanda Cinema Line, it is not difficult to find that Wanda Cinema Line achieved operating income of 11.2 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 40%, and net profit of 1.37 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 15%. Box office revenue was 7.6 billion yuan, and the number of movie visitors was 184 million, a record high; Non-box office revenue was 3.9 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of more than 100%. Non-box office revenue accounted for 35% of operating income, an increase of 12 percentage points from 2015, and the proportion increased significantly. Among them, revenue from sales of cola, popcorn and other products was 1.326 billion yuan, an increase of 43.68%, and advertising revenue increased by 223.63%. The company's ecosystem construction has achieved remarkable results.

At the same time, Wanda also actively seized the opportunity of live broadcasts, integrated the resources of Shiguang. com, and converted the marketing resources of Shiguang. com and Hollywood film companies into live broadcasts of exclusive premieres and other events, and synchronized and real-time interactions with the theaters under Wanda Theater Line.

It is understood that at the second press conference of "The Great Wall" in December 2016 alone, the number of live broadcasts exceeded 15 million, and this year's "Speed and Passion 8" reached 35 million. So far, Wanda's live broadcast platform business has also begun to take shape.

It is worth mentioning that as an important support of Wanda, members are the absolute bargaining chip for its proud film industry. In the early release of the "Member +" strategy, Wanda proposed to build a film life around five parts: "Member + online movie theaters, Member + movie derivatives, Member + games, Member + finance, and Member + brand cross-border". Ecosystem.

Data shows that Wanda currently has 80 million members, making it the world's largest movie screening terminal membership system. This number of members far exceeds that of competing products, a highly viscous user base, and a huge database that helps precise marketing will become one of Wanda's trump cards in building a film life ecosystem.

Behind the seemingly simple transition from "theaters" to "movies" is precisely the development process of Wanda's film life ecosystem from decentralization to integration. Looking at Wanda's business deployment, from the "Member +" strategy to today's diversified business segments such as film screening, advertising media, integrated marketing, derivatives sales, online live broadcasts and online theaters, theaters have indeed become "difficult to fully reflect the company's business status", and Wanda Films can better cover the essence of it.

Five major business platforms are linked together, and the layout of the entire industry chain promotes the dream of a film and television empire?

From a professional perspective, films represent an industry, and production, publicity, theaters and cinemas are all indispensable and important parts of it. This time, Wanda's change from "theater line" to "movie" has gone from part to the whole, focusing on the film industry and beginning to lay out the entire industry chain. The ambitions are obvious.

Regarding the future development of Wanda Cinema Line, Zeng Maojun once said,"On the one hand, the company will accelerate the development of theaters and further increase urban coverage and market share; on the other hand, the company will open up upstream and downstream businesses, realize the development of the entire industry chain, and ultimately build Five major business platforms, including cinema terminal platform, media marketing platform, film and television IP platform, online business platform, and movie and game interactive platform, realize the construction of Wanda film life ecosystem."

It is undeniable that theaters are an important bargaining chip for Wanda Theater to expand into other fields. Although the film industry was sluggish in 2016, it ushered in the best period for mergers and acquisitions and integration. Major film investment companies were racing around and continuously expanding their market share and coverage. Wanda's "buy, buy" pace simply cannot stop; at the same time, Wanda adopts large-scale operation and innovative marketing for its theaters, insists on using leading projection technology, and provides users with high-quality movie-viewing services.

As of the end of 2016, Wanda had 401 studios with 3564 screens. The number of new studios exceeded 100 throughout the year, and the number of new screens increased by 40% year-on-year. In addition, 202 IMAX screens and 11 Dolby Cinema were put into operation., independently developed advanced projection systems such as "Wanda Hall 9" and X-land.

On this basis, Wanda Cinema has also continued to make efforts in marketing, building a film and television marketing matrix with Wuzhou Publishing, Shiguang, and Wanda Media as the main body, realizing multiple media marketing platforms, film and television IP platforms and online business platforms. Platform linkage.

Wuzhou Publishing's many years of experience accumulation and refined implementation operations can maximize regional advantages and boost box office. At the same time, it deeply integrates all resources of the Wanda Department to create a deep fit between theme squares, holiday activities and movies, etc. to integrate the audience into the movie viewing group.

Take "The Great Wall" as an example. Although reputation has been declining, the box office has soared. It is precisely due to Wanda's accurate prediction of the film and appropriate marketing adjustments. It has set its sights on the box office champions in the Christmas and New Year's Day stalls, which is also an important reason for the subsequent strong and continued growth of the box office.

In terms of film production, Zeng Maojun revealed that Wanda Cinema's criteria for selecting and making films are at least over 100 million yuan, and generally do not make films worth less than 100 million yuan. Moreover,"the quality of the films must be good, and what marketing can do is icing on the cake. In addition, we will choose good partners. If the partners have continuous film output, it may achieve strategic cooperation with us in the studio, which will be beneficial to the film company."

It is worth mentioning that Wanda Cinema will also begin to layout its game business and create a movie-game linkage platform: accurately analyze movie-watching users through big data, accurately push target users, integrate online and offline resource advantages, and comprehensively cover The film and television crowd perfectly combines real-life experience and game content to create a new model of movie-game linkage.

It is understood that on April 6, Wanda Cinema Games has launched more than a dozen works such as "The Legend of the Condor Heroes","River God","Bright Moon in the Qin Dynasty","Wilderness", and "Football of the Giants"., covering various types of IP from film and television, games, sports, and animation.

Content production becomes Wanda's shortcoming, and the layout of the entire industry chain can easily lead to unfair competition.

Although the film life ecosystem has begun to take shape by continuously integrating industrial resources, opening up upstream and downstream, and laying out the development of the entire industry chain, Wanda's dream of a film and television empire is far from being as smooth as it seems. Behind the seemingly good situation, Wanda still has some problems.

First of all, Wanda Cinema must realize the layout of the entire industrial chain, and film production is an indispensable part. At present, the results are not very optimistic. In 2016,"Warcraft" and "The Great Wall" produced by Wanda's Legendary Pictures both grossed more than 1 billion yuan in box office in China, but the box office in North America was not very optimistic. Global box office revenue totaled US$760 million, excluding US$300 million. After the cost, there is a big gap with other well-developed films, and "Warcraft" even suffered losses.

Since the beginning of this year,"The Kidnapper" and "King Kong: Skull Island" have also performed poorly. I have to say that in an era when content is king, Wanda's film production is indeed a problem.

Secondly, as a leading company in the industry, Wanda is inevitably questioned about monopoly. Especially since 2016, the controversy over the scheduling of many films from Huayi has brought it to the forefront.

Among the series of works produced by Huayi, Wanda Theater had only 7 pre-scheduled screenings of "Rock Mastiff" on the premiere day."Lu Yao Zhi Ma Li" had 5.24% of the screenings in Wanda (the proportion of screenings in the overall national market was 24.3%). Until the controversy between Feng Xiaogang and Wang Sicong really put the issue of screenings on the table for debate, Wanda's screenings remained at around 13.8%(around 35% nationwide).

In this regard, industry insiders have also begun to question,"At present, domestic companies that deploy the film and television industry, including Wanda, Huayi, etc., all regard the layout of the entire industry chain as their development direction, covering multiple businesses such as production, distribution, and theater lines., so that market resources are concentrated in the same company, which may easily lead to unfair competition. For example, theaters will give a certain degree of tilt to the company's films in terms of film layout."

I have to say that at present, everyone has become accustomed to this phenomenon. Also take "I am not Pan Jinlian" as an example. Behind Feng Xiaogang's call for Wang Jianlin, it is a film schedule of up to 77% of Yaolai Studios. I believe this is not the industry rule.

In addition, behind Wanda's excellent performance in 2016, gross profit margins of movie viewing revenue, merchandise, catering sales revenue and advertising revenue fell by 7.67%, 7.80% and 12.09% respectively compared with the same period last year.

Wanda Films wants to build an industrial chain that includes Wanda Cinema Line, Wuzhou Publishing, Shiguang, Wanda Media, Wanda Games, etc. Whether this huge aircraft carrier can emerge, the market is also waiting for the answer.

Editor: yvonne