IP heat hits comics field: Tong Shi Network and Huayi Brothers establish joint venture film industry

On April 27, 2016, Tong Shi Network issued an announcement announcing the establishment of a joint venture with Huayi Brothers. Tong Shi holds 51% of the shares and has a controlling stake. After the Internet IP was hyped up to tens of millions of dollars, the popularity of film and television IP adaptations finally reached the field of comics in the second dimension.

Original title Dialogue Wang Jun, Chairman of Tong Shi: Establishing a joint venture with Huayi Brothers, how to play Tong Shi's comic film game linkage?

After the Internet IP was hyped up to tens of millions of dollars, the popularity of film and television IP adaptations finally reached the field of comics in the second dimension.

On April 27, 2016, Tong Shi Network issued an announcement announcing the establishment of a joint venture with Huayi Brothers. Tong Shi holds 51% of the shares and has a controlling stake.

The contract shows that the joint venture company will select 10 IP works on the bighorn comic APP for adaptation every year, with a single IP license amount ranging from 1 million to 10 million. Wang Jun, chairman of Tongshi Network, said in an interview with Digital Entertainment DreamWorks that the adapted content will cover four types: online dramas and online movies, TV dramas, live-action movies and animations.

The establishment of the joint venture film industry is another important layout for Tong Shi on the road to film and television after the establishment of Zengshang Film Industry in January. Zengshang Pictures is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Tong Shi. Its positioning field is animation and online drama development. It is currently working on the animation of "The Lost World" and "The Cage of the Sick".

In terms of VIP charges for comics, Tong Shi chose to increase user stickiness in the form of "daily updates", which is to shorten the update cycle, and carried out channel cooperation with a well-known domestic search engine. It has brought different new thinking to the industry.

Before the implementation of VIP charges for film, television and comics, the game business was still Tong Shi's pillar business. For Tong Shi, in addition to undertaking profit-making functions, the game section will also become the foundation of roaming linkage, shouldering the important task of cooperating with new sections such as light novels and communities to transform fans of works into fans of the platform.

Big horn worms have transformed into a secondary IP library and become the greatest asset in the road to film and television

. In fact, it is not uncommon in the industry for content parties holding a large number of secondary IP to choose to use film and television. In 2015, Youyao, a subsidiary of Aofei Animation, brought the serial anime "100,000 Cold Jokes" to the big screen, earning more than 100 million yuan in box office. For content parties that do not have Tencent's one-stop development of "anime and film industry", choosing a strong film and television producer to cooperate is a win-win situation.

In January 2016, Tong Shi established Zengshang Pictures and announced a cooperation with Shili Film and Television to launch three online drama projects in 2016. The boss of Shili is Bai Yicong, who is known as the first brother of online drama.

This cooperation with Huayi can be regarded as a powerful expansion of Tong Shi's film and television production capabilities.

According to the contract, the joint venture company will select 10 IP works on the bighorn comics APP for adaptation every year, with a single IP license amount ranging from 1 million to 10 million, which means that Tong Shi's film and television speed has increased to double digits per year. level, the scope has also expanded from online dramas and animations to covering four types: online dramas and online movies, TV dramas, live-action movies and animations.

On April 15, Tong Shi's "Lost World Traveler" officially announced its animation. The adaptation and production were carried out by the Jinglei Animation, which had produced "Battle Armored Steel Feather" and "Yesterday's Blue Sky", with Sun Meng serving as the director, and Japan's company Akira Co., Ltd. was brought in to participate in the collaboration.

On April 29,"The Cage of Sleepy Disease" serialized on the bighorn worm was announced for animation. It was produced by the ASK.studio team led by well-known domestic animator Yu Yu (version Q).

It is not difficult to find through the cooperation details above that Tong Shi's bighorn comics, as the top-ranked secondary IP library in the industry, have become the greatest asset on the road to film and television.

Gong Chen, executive president of Zengshang Pictures, told Digital Entertainment DreamWorks that Tongshi Network uses its bighorn comics as a content IP resource library and comics as a content incubation channel to achieve IP value-added and realization through the film, television and gamification of its works. purpose. In terms of development form, Tong Shi chose to conduct joint development in the form of an IP Copyright Committee. He would select suitable partners in every link to jointly develop, and would even participate in various forms. With Tong Shi's understanding of fans and readers and the business development advantages of partners, we will jointly give back to fans.

At present, the number of contracted studios and cartoonists under the Big Horn Bug has reached 500, and the number of serialized comics exceeds 1000, most of which have full copyright.

In terms of the editorial team, another important factor at the PGC level, Tong Shi maintains a content editing team of more than 40 people, each with more than 5 book publishing experience. Currently, this team is intensively developing scripts, with more than 20 scripts launched. Based on the industry's average film and television production cycle, most of these works will be available to the audience in 2017-2018.

Platform IP-linked games have become the protagonists, and fans of slow-line water-testing works have transformed into platform fans.

Before the implementation of film and television and comic VIP charges, the game business was still Tong Shi's pillar business and the economic foundation supporting the development of the platform.

Within Tong Shi's system, game operations have always been relatively independent and have not been connected with his Big Horn App.

At present, the total number of games in Tongshi Intermodal exceeds 10, which are divided into two types: platform IP linkage and outsourcing intermodal transportation.

Platform IP linkage refers to games that are deeply developed according to the platform's own IP, have full copyright, and are linked with the cyclical popularity of film and television. Outsourced intermodal games have nothing to do with the platform IP. Most of them are games developed with purchased hot IP, such as Hatsuyin and full-time masters.

With the acceleration of comic-movie-game linkage, the proportion of platform IP-linked games will increase in the future.

Currently, the bighorn APP is being transformed into an ACGN portal with comics as its core. Wang Jun said that in the next stage, a game center section will be added to the Big Horn Bug APP. In the initial stage, it will cooperate with Japan to simultaneously launch a variety of secondary games in China. The reason for this consideration is not simply to establish game distribution channels, but to transform pure fans of author's works into platform fans of the bighorn bug by opening up the consumption habits of own users and providing readers with diversified content services.

Gong Chen believes that the original fan economy was purely product-oriented. Horned worms can provide readers with diversified services for their favorite games, comics and other content. Through slow-line operations, they can gradually form their own closed-loop and cultural atmosphere, thereby creating a fan economy belonging to the Horned worms platform.

As Tong Shi believes, the transformation from "content fans" to "platform fans" will be a slow-operating process, which means that games will continue to lead as Tong Shi's profitable responsibility for a while in the future. In terms of the game business, Tong Shi needs to increase the number of intermodal games or develop more games like Star Era that are as profitable.

In order to cope with the expansion and linkage of the game section, Tong Shi is equipped with an 80-person game operation team. Among them, Zhou Zhigang, the director of APP operations, once served as an operation director in Perfect World, and the marketing director is from Ninetowns Games.

Is the Japanese update really a panacea for VIP charges for comics?

The monetization of fees for online comics has always been a core issue that plagues online comics platforms.

At present, Tencent Animation and Youyao, the two major platforms of Guomi, do not have a unified standard for charging comics. The former adopts a paid reading model based on online texts, that is, only users can pay for reading; while the latter has chosen a membership model similar to video websites, that is, VIP members can read first.

Wang Jun told Digital Entertainment DreamWorks that if comics are to be read for a fee like online texts, they must first ensure two prerequisites: one is that the quality of the work is excellent enough, and the other is that it is updated daily. Only when the update frequency is reached can user stickiness be increased. This is the reason why Tong Shi chose to use the "daily update" method to break the VIP charge for comics.

At present, Tong Shi's bighorn comics are gradually popularizing the update frequency from three to four times a week. In terms of cooperation channels, Tong Shi will cooperate with well-known domestic search engines to jointly promote genuine paid reading.

However, is Japan really a panacea for solving VIP charges for comics?

The answer is not unique.

Take Tencent Animation, which is currently trying to charge VIP, as an example. The decision on whether to choose a charging model lies with the comic author. Since VIP fees will lose 90% of free users, many well-known cartoonists have not chosen VIP fees. For example,"Mr Surprise of China", as the fastest animated representative work under Tencent Animation, still chooses to read it for free, precisely because the revenue will drop instead of increasing VIP fees.

Different from the simple and crude fee sharing logic of online articles, the comic platform simultaneously operates two mechanisms: a fee mechanism and a VIP fee sharing mechanism. The choice of fee income (that is, the higher the popularity of the signed work, the higher the fee) or the VIP fee sharing is entirely determined by the market. When the number of paid comics increases, free readers flock to the free works area to boost popularity, increasing royalties, thereby re-attracting authors to choose free works. For non-core readers, being able to read excellent national manga works through free channels naturally eliminates the need to pay.

Judging from the development history of online text fees, VIP fee sharing was implemented in 2003 by industry leaders. In June 2004, Qidian ranked 100th in the world ALEXA, and today in 2016, the one who occupies this position is Youku, the first brother of the video website, which shows how powerful the Qidian was at that time.

The bighorn is obviously far from the size and industry status of its starting point to promote commercial progress. VIP charging is an obvious strategic follow-up.

However, the implementation of the Japanese strategy is still a wonderful move for Tong Shi. The attempt to keep up with opponents to charge VIP can significantly reduce the company's expenditure on manuscript fees; compared with the average speed of opponents 'weekly updates, the frequency of daily updates can achieve faster content growth and narrow the content gap, while also gaining higher user stickiness. User stickiness is one of the foundations for VIP charging in the future.

From 0 to 1 million manuscript fees, it has been two years since the starting point. How long will the VIP fees for comics go?

Editor: vian