Century Huapeng Wang Pengfei: "Commercial drama + show performance" opens up the era of IP operation 2.0

Wang Pengfei is planning the sixth anniversary performance of "Li Lei and Han Meimei". This play almost has the meaning of "one son determines the world" for his century Huapeng.

Original title: IP is intended to open up the industrial chain, not to make quick

money. IP is currently so popular. If you want to examine the two institutions that do the most IP in China, one must be Shanghai Jinhui Communication, which launched the "Tomb Robber Notes" series, and the other is Beijing's Century Huapeng. However, when talking about IP types, compared with Jin Hui, who specializes in adapting novel stage plays, Century Huapeng's attempts and involvement are broad.

"We have tried almost all themes, including hot topics in society, adaptations of novels, songs of the same name, comics and even popular images, such as Garfield." Wang Pengfei, founder and artistic director of Century Huapeng Cultural Media, said that the growth of Century Huapeng, a private drama institution, has been indissoluble with IP all the way. Try, explore, reflect, and find another path after trial and error. This is how Wang Pengfei came through.

A drama brand that started in youth cannot have a single product line.

Wang Pengfei is planning the sixth anniversary performance of "Li Lei and Han Meimei". This play almost has the meaning of "one son determines the world" for his century Huapeng.

It was the trend of nostalgia that year. However, such a nostalgic stage play with a youth theme did not deliberately pile up memory symbols. He positioned the audience in their thirties."For such a group of people, the meaning of nostalgia is not nostalgia itself, but choice. After a certain amount of accumulation and thinking, choose what direction to take for the rest of your life." Wang Pengfei said. Characters from textbooks such as Li Lei, Han Meimei, Lin Tao, and Jim came to the stage of the drama "Li Lei and Han Meimei". They had the same rich life experiences as many "post-80s", and life became realistic and cruel. They grew up in struggle. Following the song of the same name, this drama allows the beauty and sadness in those memories to spread in the hearts of a generation. Since its premiere, the play has attracted a large number of viewers born in the 1980s. These characters who emerged from English textbooks not only evoke their youthful memories, but also reflect the life, work and emotional experiences of the generation born in the 1980s have aroused strong resonance.

In the years after "Li Lei and Han Meimei", Wang Pengfei would subconsciously replicate this success, but the intensive youthful drama began to give him a sense of crisis. "The market competition has been fierce in recent years because the industry feels that the explosion point of the drama market is not far away, and everyone is competing fiercely."

At the end of 2013, Century Huapeng co-produced the children's stage drama "Garfield's Birthday Party" authorized by the American original writer. This was Wang Pengfei's first attempt and received stable market returns. He is also trying to expand the market for children's drama. In 2014, the mainland copyright of Taiwanese cultural master Wu Nianzhen's classic stage play "Taipei Morning" was introduced. For a time, all major theaters in first-tier cities such as Beijing and Shanghai were full. In order to quickly increase market share, Wang Pengfei decided to use the "Rainbow Drama" brand he created to only serve youth stage dramas, and at the same time make classic dramas a symbiotic brand.

"In fact, as early as 2009, the market segmentation of drama and stage dramas was already very clear. At that time, urban comedy categories represented by Kaixin Mahua and Lei Zile, classic categories represented by human arts and Chinese dialect, and Meng Jinghui The pioneering experiments represented by the representative and the partial classic types represented by Lai Shengchuan have clear camps, but they are all a single product line." Wang Pengfei said that he wants to build Century Huapeng, a private commercial drama enterprise, into the only stage drama production organization in China that has the potential to cover product lines of all ages, and use youth dramas and classic dramas as brand industry lines to develop interactively.

"Four youth dramas have been produced, but the current productions are different from those in the early years. There weren't so many youth films in the early years. Youth films have exploded in recent years, and the acting requires more caution and caution. Even if youth themes do not pursue too profound human portrayal and exposure and reflection, scripts and performances that impress the audience with sincerity also require time and effort. Sometimes, driven by social hotspots, the pressure of production comes even more urgent. Because the youth born in the 1980s has just figured it out, the youth born in the 1990s has come again." Wang Pengfei said.

The uncontrollable "roller coaster" experience of the two dramas of the IP drama

If "Li Han" let the audience know about Century Huapeng, then the production of the IP drama will allow Wang Pengfei to "understand" the audience.

"Most of the IP craze focuses on quick monetization and effortless publicity. Don't you know that if an IP drama is launched, the fate of the drama will almost become difficult for you to control." Wang Pengfei said. Based on Century Huapeng's 2015 work "Get lost! For example, the first round of "Tumor King" in Shanghai almost created the lowest box office in the company's history, with 4 theater performances for 1000 people and revenue of less than 50,000 yuan. After the film was released, the film's good reputation drove the stage drama to soar. Although it did not appear on the Shanghai stage again, the box office in other cities could basically reach 60% or even 8.5%.

"Gardenia Blooms" is a complete counterexample. "The box office was good before the movie was released, but after it was released, it was a mess." Wang Pengfei said. The premiere of the stage play "Gardenia Blooms" was selected at the Central Academy of Drama."The theater of the Chinese Opera is actually very difficult to sell tickets, with only more than 600 seats. At that time, the box office of four performances exceeded 400,000 yuan. The second round was at the Haidian Theater, when the movie of the same name had already been released. But in the more commercialized Haidian Theater, the same four games only sold for more than 100,000 yuan." Wang Pengfei smiled helplessly."This is really a roller coaster experience." Due to the unsatisfactory reputation of the film of the same name, no matter how sophisticated the stage drama production is, it is impossible to reverse the situation. At present, performance plans in Beijing and Shanghai dare not be promoted easily, and the level of inquiries from foreign performers is also very low. Wang Pengfei was unwilling to "Gardenia Blooms"."It's not that he prefers this play because he is a producer, but that as a producer, he objectively evaluated that the production of the play was in terms of script polishing, stage lighting design, etc. It is indeed far better than the 'Tumor Jun'. But there may be no chance for the audience to know again."

Uncontrollable risks are a fatal shortcoming of IP. This risk also includes fans 'theater transformation power. In 2012, Century Huapeng once co-producer launched the anime stage drama "Stealing the Star in September". It was a manga that had been serialized for seven years and had the highest sales volume in China. At that time, it had reached 30 million copies. The fan base is very large but it has not been successful,"because its audience positioning is very awkward. It is neither a children's drama nor a college or above group. The fans happen to be in the middle, and it is the group with zero box office conversion rate for stage dramas." Wang Pengfei said,"Now there are two principles in the selection of plays. First, the IP itself must have high public awareness or a fixed fan audience. Whether its fan audience will be the consumer group of stage plays; second, whether the IP is suitable for stage plays. Presented in the form of stage plays. Having done too much IP and having too much trial and error experience, I have become calmer and very cautious about IP operations."

In addition, there is another account that cannot be ignored. The profit margin of the stage drama itself is relatively low. Excluding the IP share, and then excluding the ticketing agent share, taxes, costs, etc., even if the box office is sold well, the profit margin that can be obtained in the early stage is also very limited. If the box office is not ideal for various reasons, the risk of loss is much higher than that of the original work. Regardless of whether the producers and producers of stage dramas are profitable or not, IP parties that have achieved full product development are often earning both fame and fortune, and it is always the producers and producers who are under huge pressure of cost recovery.

Commercial drama + show performance opens up a new path of "transformation"

. If we put aside the purely conceptual discussion, what is IP? What does it mean for dramatists?

Maybe it's emotional resonance. "When we wrote" Li Lei and Han Meimei "in 2010, we didn't have the current IP concept, but it is indeed a hot social topic." Wang Pengfei said.

Perhaps it is the speed and ability to monetize. When an unfamiliar original drama is introduced to the market, the biggest challenge it faces comes from the audience, because the audience does not know what it is and whether it can be worth the ticket price. On the other hand, it comes from the producers. The producers themselves do not have a particularly clear and intuitive feeling of the works presented, and create through exploration and exploration through creation.

After several baptism of IP dramas, Wang Pengfei found a new starting point for IP."The significance of IP should be to connect the industrial chain, integrate related fields, find more levels of profit space for drama, and break the single box office model.".

Century Huapeng is planning the first round of financing."The introduction of capital is also because we have figured out the direction clearly and don't want to make too many 'follow the trend' IP." Wang Pengfei said.

If stage plays rely solely on box office, the ceiling will be very low. This can be compared to Japan's Four Seasons Theater and Broadway. The income difference between the two is quite large. Four Seasons is already the largest troupe in Asia and an outstanding representative of the stage. Its annual income of 1.6 billion yuan depends on more than 3000 performances. The Four Seasons Theatre Company relies on the introduction of Broadway copyright licenses, and otherwise has no copyright income or content conversion income. Broadway can be licensed all over the world and can be licensed in multiple types, including movies, anime and even theme parks.

"I don't want to copy Happy Mahua. Some successes are unreplicable because it has a unique accumulation process. Recently, there have been many stage plays that want to quickly replicate the Mahua route. Many plays are directly aiming at the goal of 'transformation'. For them, the stage and theater are like steps that they can step on with one step, and they can expect to perform one or two rounds of more than ten or twenty games, and they can directly make movies or online movies." Wang Pengfei said,"This is very dangerous and impetuous."

Wang Pengfei is opening up another path of "transformation". When "Gardenia Blooms" hit a box office failure, the residency show for Wanda Group at the Xishuangbanna Theme Park was a great success. Currently, Century Huapeng has become a company with mature works in the fields of commercial drama and tourism shows. "Now when we talk about commercial drama and tourism shows, we mostly regard them as two completely different types. After financing, we must maximize the advantages of the combination. In the future, we must realize the connection between commercial drama and tourism shows." Wang Pengfei's blueprint has the most well-known precedent."The most profitable performance IP in the world is" The Lion King ", which is precisely a work that opens up commercial drama and show shows. As a show, it is performed in segments in theme parks, occupying Disneyland around the world, and at the same time, it attracts a large audience on Broadway and the West End of London as a commercial drama.

"If we produce an IP, it must have both the possibility of transforming commercial drama and show content in the performance industry. It will have greater liquidity and greater room for expansion, and can make a difference in technology, brand, and audience awareness." Wang Pengfei said.

Editor: yvonne