Lock field fails: "Three Lives and Three Lives of Peach Blossom" reminds idols of superstition

third Life doesn't have the bad behavior of making money in the capital market through box office fraud like Ip Man 3. However, the large-scale locking behavior organized by fans also does not reflect the true popularity of the film.

original title: the movie version of "three generations and Ten miles of Peach Blossom" got off to a good start, but it failed to continue

at 2: 00 p.m. on August 3, "three generations" was officially released and successfully grossed 150 million yuan at the box office that day. By Friday, Aug. 4, although the proportion of overall screenings and prime-time shows had increased, the single-day box office had fallen to just over 100 million yuan. The proportion of "Sansheng III" in the total box office of the day fell to 27.1% from 40.8% the day before, far lower than the screening rate of 37.5%-indicating that there are too many cinemas reserved for "Sansheng III".

since Saturday, the production of "the third Life" began to decline, and by Sunday it was only about 25%, which is roughly in line with Friday's share of the box office. The one-day box office of the movie also began to decline, grossing only 80 million on Saturday, and the box office on Saturday was usually higher than that on Friday.

within four days, the film production and box office of" Sansheng III "have dropped so sharply, mainly because the market is weak after fans" lock up ".

the so-called lock field refers to the behavior that fans have been organizing privately since Sansheng III began pre-selling on major online ticketing platforms in mid-July. They will first check the movie shows that are already open to purchase tickets and buy some of the seats, so as to ensure that the show will not be cancelled because no one buys tickets, thus locking in the number of "Sansheng III".

more importantly, these early ticket purchases will also be interpreted as "three lives" movies are very popular with fans. The film and publicity distributors will use this as a bargaining chip in an attempt to persuade cinemas to reserve more screenings for the film.

A lot of such information can be found on Weibo with "three generations" and "lock field" as key words. Both Liu Yifei's fans and Yang Yang's fans are locking up in an organized way, hoping to help idol films get more attention in the market in this way.

among them, a user named "Night Hua Mammy Breeders" on Weibo posted a huge form file. It also said that as of 11:00 on the evening of August 1, there had been 42091 lock-ups in 53 key cities: "I hope the teacher of Mao (Note: Yang Yang's fan name) will continue to do a good job in the case at the same time, and also try to lock up more shows so that passers-by can have a chance to watch the movie."

fans can do this by taking advantage of the presale mechanism that is popular in the film market. The mechanism first came from "Love in Love" directed by Ning Hao in 2014, when it gained word-of-mouth success through a pre-sale of more than 100 million yuan, and used it as a bargaining chip to persuade cinemas to increase production, and eventually the film grossed more than 1.1 billion yuan at the box office. It ranked second on the box office list of the year.

there is nothing wrong with the presale mechanism. The rationality of this approach is that through pre-sale, the film and cinemas understand the actual needs of the audience for the film, thus more targeted cinema scheduling. In other words, it is equivalent to promoting the flow of information between buyers and sellers, making the original market mechanism more effective.

however, in the past few years, the pre-sale mechanism is slowly failing, because the pre-sale results can be manipulated, resulting in a lot of errors in the information received by the seller. The previous "Ip Man 3" is an example, the film itself by buying the box office, resulting in the film's false popularity, thus interfering with the normal market order.

third Life does not have the bad behavior of making money in the capital market through box office fraud like Ip Man 3. However, the large-scale locking behavior organized by fans also does not reflect the true popularity of the film. On Weibo, a fan who posted 11 tickets for the movie "Sansheng III" said: "go to the cinema in the afternoon to pick up the tickets for the lock, and then send the tickets to passers-by in the shopping mall below."

the money for movie tickets is spent, but there is no real consumer. This means that if cinemas had arranged films based on pre-sale data, they would have found that the audience did not have that much demand for "Sansheng III". The fact that the screening rate of "three generations" is much higher than that of the box office is the best example.

in this way, the cinema will naturally adjust the arrangement. With the screenings compressed, it is not difficult to understand the rapid decline of "Sansheng III" after its hot first day in theaters. Fans' spending power was exhausted in a short period of time, while non-fan audiences were not attracted to the cinema.

as the main producer, Alibaba Pictures has not done a good job in attracting non-fan groups. The poor quality of the film itself is on the one hand, and, at a time when the whole people are talking about Wolf Warriors 2, which has now exceeded 3 billion yuan, it is almost certain to break the box office record for Mermaid-the final publicity sprint before its release was almost silent, and it is not surprising that it was finally crushed by Wolf Warriors 2. (by the way, the earliest release date of the third Life was July 21, but it was later adjusted to August 3.

the film and television industry has always had a tradition of being infatuated with idol stars, after all, their own fan base is considered to be a huge market. The situation of "three generations" seems to be a wake-up call for the industry.

Edit: xiongwei