News from the Financial Associated Press, January 27 (Reporter Chen Chen)The box office of the Spring Festival stalls has exceeded the 1 billion yuan mark for 5 consecutive days. While the film market is “recovering”, this year’s Spring Festival stalls also have several “episodes” due to fierce competition.
On January 25, the movie “Chinese Ping Pong: The Jedi Counterattack”, which was only released for two days, suddenly announced that it would withdraw from the Spring Festival competition, adjust to a small-scale screening, and postpone it to February 17 for the final release. In this regard, the reason given by the film is: due to major mistakes and serious deficiencies in the decision-making, preparation, and promotion of the publicity and distribution team, the film fell into a particularly passive situation during the Spring Festival.
An insider in the film industry told a reporter from the Financial Associated Press that under the fierce and brutal competition in the Spring Festival this year, the wrong announcement and release decision will cause the film to fail to achieve the expected effect or even “smash the street”. Some films may choose to postpone the release because they want to leave an “opportunity”, but they will also face a high risk of word-of-mouth.
“Frequent file changes and withdrawals will lower the audience’s expectations for the film. At the same time, as an inspirational film, the behavior of ‘evading’ in the face of competition will also have a certain degree of impact on the film’s reputation.” The person said.
However, one wave of ups and downs rose again. “Quasi-box office champion” “Manjianghong” was also involved in the storm. Recently, someone posted on social media about the movie ticket of “The Wandering Earth 2” that he bought was refunded by the theater due to “equipment failure”, and “Manjianghong” was screened at that time, which caused “Manjianghong” to be suspected of “stealing the box office” rumors.
A reporter from the Financial Associated Press also asked several people in the film industry about this, and they all said: “I don’t know about this news.”
Facing the rumors of “stealing the box office”, the crew of “Man Jianghong” issued a statement through its official Weibo yesterday: “The accusations of “stealing the box office” and “ghost field” are all nonsense, and will protect the legitimate rights and interests of the film through litigation and other methods according to law.
The statement also stated, “We welcome any discussion from the audience on the content of the film, but we regret the deliberate spreading of rumors and malicious smearing by some people with ulterior motives. This behavior not only caused harm to the film “Manjianghong”, but also disrupted The market environment for Spring Festival stalls has further hurt the Chinese film industry.”
It is worth noting that despite the “constant variables”, it did not affect the overall box office performance of the Spring Festival stalls.
According to the professional version of Maoyan, as of press time, the total box office of the Spring Festival stalls was 6.141 billion yuan, and the number of viewers was 114 million.
Among them, Huanxi Media (1003.HK) produced the movie “Man Jianghong” which has surpassed 400 million yuan at the box office for 5 consecutive days, and surpassed “The Wandering Earth 2” at the box office two days after its release. At present, “Man Jianghong” occupies the first place in the Spring Festival box office with a box office of 2.328 billion yuan. The “Wandering Earth 2” produced by China Film (600977.SH) ranks second with a box office of 1.97 billion. “Core” ranked third with a box office of 677 million yuan.
As the underlying stock, Huanxi Media rose sharply on the first day of trading after the Hong Kong Stock Festival yesterday. It once soared to more than 20% in early trading, and narrowed to about 10% at the close. As of 13:30 today, Huanxi Media fell by nearly 9%.
(Editor Liu Yan)