Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

This year's Spring Festival, not only "wandering Earth 2" has become a hit, but its movies are also selling well around it.

So far, the total amount of crowdfunding related to mechanical puppies, artificial intelligence MOSS and digital life cards has exceeded 100 million yuan, accomplishing "a small goal" ahead of schedule, and there are still more than 20 days to go before the deadline for crowdfunding. This is an unprecedented situation in the history of Chinese films, and the success of "wandering the Earth 2" may bring the market around Chinese films to a new stage.

Crowdfunding page screenshots this wave of "wild consumption" far exceeded the expectations of the film team and licensees. Brand manufacturer Saifan Science Fiction Space originally set up a crowdfunding project of only 100000 yuan, but as a result, the crowdfunding goal was achieved just a minute after the project was launched. Seeing the rising tide and rising crowdfunding, Saifan sci-fi space even issued an article calling on consumers to calm down. In particular, it is warned that crowdfunding is different from the pre-sale of ordinary goods, there are certain risks.

But this also reflects a message from the side: the surrounding brand manufacturers, which originally only wanted to make a small profit of 100000, are not prepared enough to support a large plate of hundreds of millions of yuan. Sales volume has risen, production capacity has not kept up, for example, the mechanical puppy assembly model of hot products, the first shipment will have to wait until June this year, the cooling period of nearly half a year has let the business opportunities pass, and a similar situation happened in "wandering the Earth 1".

Compared with the North American market, China's IP surrounding industry development is not mature, whether it is the early authorization, development, design, or follow-up production, supply, there is still a lot of room for improvement. More than 80% of China's film revenue comes from box office and product placement, while revenue from film and television derivatives is less than 10%, according to the forward-looking Industrial Research Institute. In the United States, box office receipts account for only about 30% of total film revenue, with the rest coming from film derivatives licensing and copyright operations such as theme parks.

The sales of products around "wandering Earth 2" have given the domestic surrounding market confidence to a certain extent, but it will take more time to form a perfect industrial chain.

The surrounding market has not become a climate in China, selling movies around is nothing new, but it was not until the sales around "wandering Earth 2" became popular that the surrounding market in the mainland sparked a splash. Before this, the surrounding market has been lukewarm, and some film teams do not even know that there is such a thing as selling the surrounding area after the film is released.

In recent years, the Chinese animated film IP has attracted market attention. In 2019, Guoman film "the Devil Boy of Nezha" unexpectedly became a dark horse during the summer, with a box office of more than 5 billion yuan, still ranking fourth at the Chinese box office, but it has been in a dilemma in terms of IP derivatives and has not been seen for a long time.

The screenshot of the professional version of Cat's Eye did not announce the development of surrounding products on Weibo until less than half a month after the popularity of the film's officially authorized platform. Due to the lack of preparatory work, the lack of a systematic library of "Nezha" leads to a limited way to quickly produce peripheral products, such as badges, posters, key chains, and other light peripherals that are easy to produce in the early stage, while derivatives like hand-made models have to be supervised and repaired by the director, which takes a long time to polish.

As a result of the Weibo screenshot, the shipment of the first batch of light goods is expected to take three months, while the manual ones will have to wait until April of the following year. After such a long waiting cycle, cauliflower has cooled off, and the heat of the buyer's market has long faded.

In addition to the product launch is too slow, fans are not satisfied with the official launch of the surrounding itself, some products are lack of creativity, simple appearance and low performance-to-price ratio, but can not make collectible products with high-quality IP.

There is no sign of genuine goods, but many unscrupulous merchants have long heard of the wind. On the second day of its release, pirated peripheral products with easy production and low prices can be found on the e-commerce platform, including notebooks, mobile phone cases, water cups, pillows, T-shirts and so on.

Although the film producer issued a statement to this end, saying that the unauthorized development / promotion of "Nezha" derivatives is an infringement, and called on the audience to resist piracy and protect the original, domestic copyright awareness is still in the awakening stage. Piracy has been banned repeatedly, and relevant pirated peripheral products can still be found on e-commerce platforms today.

The screenshot of the e-commerce platform is not only "Nezha", but other well-known domestic IP films such as "the Great return of Journey to the West" and "White Snake: Origin" will more or less encounter similar situations when developing peripheral products.

The root of it is that the development of the industrial chain around the domestic IP is not mature, and the film team and brand manufacturers do not pay enough attention to the surrounding products. Every time we wait for the movie box office to take into account the surrounding things, there is not enough time for designers and brand manufacturers, resulting in no clear portraits of the target group, and a lack of thinking about the development of IP products.

Rome was not built in a day. Compared with other domestic films IP, wandering Earth 2 launched a project for surrounding products in September last year, leaving more time for product development and design. And the pre-sale of mechanical puppy clumsy models, digital life cards and other products, in the appearance and practicality has been recognized by many consumers, therefore, "small broken ball" around the big sale also seems reasonable.

However, compared with Hollywood, where the film IP derivatives market is more developed, the domestic peripheral market is still in its infancy. So far, "wandering Earth 2" derivatives account for about 4% of the film's box office revenue, and even if the subsequent crowdfunding continues to grow, derivatives will account for no more than 10% of the film's total revenue. There is still a big gap from the huge 70% revenue generated by foreign film derivatives.

After decades of development in the United States, the film derivatives market has formed a very complete industrial chain. One of the most representative is Disney, from the beginning of the Mickey Mouse animation series, to "Racing Story" at the beginning of this century, to the acquisition of Lucasfilm in 2012, to the Star Wars series IP. Disney has always been the leading company in the development of film derivatives.

Disney official website screenshot Disney film derivatives adhere to an important principle, that is, there should be a close relationship between surrounding products and film works to ensure that the cultural connotation of the film IP can smoothly infiltrate into the derivatives. As a result, Disney began to plan and design derivatives at the beginning of preparing the film.

Inside Disney, there is a brainstorming activity called Gong Show, which does not limit its departments. All employees get together to comment on the production and design of derivatives, and many ideas come out of it. The production of peripheral products will generally be carried out at the same time as the film production to ensure that the surrounding products can be synchronized or even earlier than the release of the film, occupying enough market space.

For example, when developing derivatives of Racing Story, Disney's marketing department has a rigorous plan, even including children between the ages of 3 and 6 as a consumer group. Disney issued 70 film product authorizations, selected dozens of powerful partners such as AT&T, McDonald's and Hertz car rental company, and finally developed more than 280 products.

According to media reports, since 2006, Racing Story has reached 2 billion dollars in annual sales of its surrounding products. By the beginning of 2011, the global total revenue of Racing Story derivatives had exceeded 8 billion US dollars.

Every time Disney prepares an IP movie, Disney adopts the process of "derivatives marketing planning comes first and the film is made later". It is such a rigorous process that greatly improves the success rate of products around Disney.

What is more crucial behind this is that over the years, the American market has gradually formed a large and stable customer base through the intensive cultivation of IP brand culture. Disney, which sits on Star Wars, Marvel and many other classic IP, is undoubtedly a big winner in the IP derivatives market.

In 1977, after the great success of the first Star Wars film, the Star Wars series began to develop huge roots in comics, novels, animation, games and other fields, and these surrounding products formed the "derivative universe" of Star Wars. It plays an important role in improving fan loyalty. Especially during the movie gap, the maturity and systematization of the derived Universe makes the Star Wars brand play a unique charm. It can be said that the significance of "derivative Universe" to Star Wars brand culture has long gone beyond the film itself.

Douban screenshot, which is an important reason why Disney is willing to buy the parent company of Star Wars for $4.05 billion. From 1977 to 2020, Star Wars films grossed $10.291 billion at the global box office, and its licensed merchandise earned $42.217 billion, four times the box office.

It can be seen that the mature surrounding market can achieve great success outside the film.

Hundreds of billions of blue oceans have yet to be developed, and the periphery of wandering Earth 2 has never been commercially successful, which at least shows that the business model of continuous blood transfusion for the movie IP through derivatives is feasible in China. The audience has enough spending power and is willing to pay for a good IP.

China has a huge film market. According to the global box office in 2021, Chinese films grossed nearly 47.3 billion yuan (about $7.5 billion), accounting for about 35% of the global market share, surpassing North America to become the world's largest film market. Therefore, the potential of China's film derivatives market is huge, and it is a blue ocean.

In recent years, there are also related films IP in China trying to develop into a series of IP with more long tail effect. For example, the "wandering Earth" series has led to a surge in sales of surrounding products with high-quality content, vaguely creating a long-term IP series and building a brand culture. Light Media's "the Devil Child of Nezha" and "Jiang Ziya" have produced a dream linkage in the movie eggs, and "the Divine Universe" may become a reality in the future.

Naha Egg Film Derivatives in Jiang Ziya is indeed a good business, but it will take more time for China to form an eco-industrial chain as mature as overseas markets. China's film market needs more high-quality content support, film IP quality pass in order to attract more traffic for the follow-up derivatives launch. On this basis, IP itself has to continue to innovate and gradually form a new cultural brand in order not to be eliminated by the market.

Behind the film is a complex industry, foreign countries also after decades of development to form a set of standardized industrialization process. On the other hand, the market around China has just entered its infancy, and more explorations are being carried out to meet the needs of the local market and consumers.

Although facing many tests, in the long run, with the continuous rise of domestic IP and the continuous improvement of domestic film industrialization, the market around China will provide more imagination.

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: zinc Finance (ID:xincaijing), author: Chen Yan

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