The box office market ushers in a "bubble summer" IP movies flock to theaters and cannot rescue the market

Looking at the IP dominated the screen with ancient costumes, youth, and girl-themed themes, the reviews were low and the production was poor. The box office dropped from a maximum of 1 billion last year to just a few tens of millions or even a few million, and they rushed offline. When audiences begin to feel tired of homogeneous IP works, can this trend continue? At the recent "Book IP Dialogue Film and Television" forum, Hong Kong director Chen Desen, writer Mai Jia, and "Harvest" magazine president Cheng Yongxin and others started some "cold thinking" amid the IP craze.

According to a report by Voice of China's "News Night", compared with last year, the total box office in July this year fell by 20%. Unlike the sluggish box office, the number of films has soared. According to incomplete statistics from reporters, the number of films released throughout the summer period exceeded 90.

It can be said that China films are experiencing a "summer of bubbles," and the biggest bubble among them is the so-called "IP movies." Looking at the IP dominated the screen with ancient costumes, youth, and girl-themed themes, the reviews were low and the production was poor. The box office dropped from a maximum of 1 billion last year to just a few tens of millions or even a few million, and they rushed offline. When audiences begin to feel tired of homogeneous IP works, can this trend continue? At the recent "Book IP Dialogue Film and Television" forum, Hong Kong director Chen Desen, writer Mai Jia, and "Harvest" magazine president Cheng Yongxin and others started some "cold thinking" amid the IP craze.

This summer's big screen is undoubtedly crowded for the IP movies that are being released one after another. Taking out the ultra-long film list of more than 90 movies in the summer period, from "To Youth 2" to "Summer of the Bubble", from "The Legend of the Gods" to "Tomb Robber Notes", the audience was confused by youth, beauty, ancient costumes, and fantasy, but the box office refused to recognize it.

Compared with last year, the box office of IP movies this summer can even be said to be "a zero less". Last year's summer IP films "Return of the Great Sage" and "Pancake Man" both drove the entire market with box office levels of 1 billion yuan; look at this year, the best-performing "To Youth 2" was 335 million yuan, while movies like "Summer of the Bubble" only sold more than 7 million yuan before leaving the market in a hurry.

Look at word of mouth. "To Youth 2" has 4 points,"The Brother Who Sleeps on My Upper Bunk" has 5 points, and "The Legend of God" has 3.3 points. "Fifty cents special effects" and "In addition to appearance, the plot lines are rotten to dregs", with the scolding, the enthusiasm for watching movies gradually faded, revealing the cruel reality. Statistics show that 36% of the total box office of movies last year came from IP movies; but less than one-fifth of all IP movies scored a score of 7 or more; and nearly half of the bad movies scored a score of less than 5.

Although five works by writer Mai's "Listen to the Wind" and "Concealment" have all been screened, in his view, the IP craze in China has brought capital into movies, but kept movies away from art. Among the 11 works that made the Oscars last year, 7, including "The Wilderness Hunter", came from purely literary works that are not well-known; but for domestic capital that pursues rapid returns, high-click-rate Internet IP is the best choice.

Mai Jia said that 90% of Zhang Yimou's "Raise the Red Lantern High" and "Red Sorghum" cannot be said to be classics, but at least they are pure literature. But many literary works today are very qualitative and have no popularity. Many novels are shoddy, but they form a huge IP through the Internet, but they have become the most favored object of capital.

In the 1990s, the fifth generation of directors brought a gorgeous explosion to China films. Cheng Yongxin, president of Harvest magazine, witnessed the process of a series of classics such as "Raise the Red Lantern High" and "Alive" moving from serious publications to the screen.

Cheng Yongxin said that from the late 1980s to the 1990s, Zhang Yimou signed a contract with us called "First Reading Rights". Before our publication came out, we were the first to send him the clear samples for 10,000 yuan a year. It was about three to four years. During that time, the movie "Alive" and the movie "Red Lantern" were released. According to Su Tong's "Families of Wives and Concubines", this has been a convention since the beginning of movies. What is more complicated now is that the IP it requires is to attract more capital, more audiences, industry, and very lively things, but it also needs some things to stabilize the sea, and these things cannot be replaced by simple IP.

There are certainly success stories in IP movies. In 2014, director Tsui Hark's "Taking Tiger Mountain by Wisdom" earned both fame and fortune with 7.7 points and 800 million yuan at the box office. The core of this film comes from the novel "Forest and Snow Field" and incorporates some Peking Opera elements. The audience base and artistic appreciation have not been lost. Only with good novels and good stories can there be classics that will be preserved later.

But the reality is that "clicks on online novels" have become almost the most important selection criterion for film and television IP. Screenwriter Shi Zhongshan said frankly that compared with the tens of thousands of words updated every day by Internet writers, the writing speed of pure literary writers "writing thousands of words in the morning and deleting 500 in the afternoon" makes the two completely lose the possibility of competition. In the view of well-known Hong Kong director Chen Desen, good works should at least be settled over time. Although Hong Kong films also experienced a period of proliferation of homogeneous martial arts films in the 1950s and 1960s, most of the films that have been passed down to this day are still made by Jin Yong and Gu Long. Looking back at Hollywood, Star Wars, Captain America, these super-big IPs have all gone through the test of at least half a century.

Chen Desen said: "From a filmmaker's perspective," Captain America "is a comic book from 1941. It still needs to be settled for children and young people all over the world to pay attention to it today."

Editor: Nancy