2024 Spring Festival File： Past Winners Roll Comedy, ＂Bear Haunted＂ Carrying Science Fiction？

Wen | Zero One

As of the date of publication, six films have been announced to participate in the Spring Festival competition on the first day of the Lunar New Year, namely: Article 20 directed by Zhang Yimou, YOLO directed and acted by Jia Ling, Pegasus 2 directed by Han Han, The Movie Emperor directed by Ning Hao, Viva La Vida directed by Han Yan, and Boonie Bears: Time Twist, the tenth big film in the bear haunt series.

At present, the "number of people who want to see" on Cat’s Eye and Taobao Film platforms are as follows:

At present, Boonie Bears: Time Twist leads slightly on both platforms, followed by YOLO’s Pegasus 2, and The Movie Emperor was booked earlier, with more tags than Article 20, but it may not last until the release period, and Viva La Vida is currently at the bottom.

One of the highlights of the Spring Festival movies in 2024 is that the big winners of the past Spring Festival movies have come to a group building: Jia Ling, Zhang Yimou, Han Han and other masters have all won billions of first and second place achievements in the Spring Festival movies, and Hi, Mom in Jia Ling in 2021 has been the box office champion of the Spring Festival movies so far, and Zhang Yimou’s "Man Jiang Hong" last year ranked third in history with 4.544 billion; Han Han’s Flying Life in 2019 was 1.728 billion yuan, and the Crazy Alien directed by Ning Hao in the same year was 2.213 billion yuan. Both of these films still gained a good box office when The Wandering Earth far exceeded expectations.

YOLO has the most bonus on the topic of publicity in the early stage, with its own traffic attribute, and almost any action is on the hot search headlines at will, which is naturally full of topics. YOLO is adapted from the Japanese film Love of Hundred Dollars, which is a boxing film starring Hideki Ando in 2014 and won the Best Film Award for Japanese Painting at the 27th Tokyo International Film Festival. In the original, Hideki Ando moved from a decadent and depressed life to boxing. There is no routine inspirational tear routine in the film.

Jia Ling’s weight loss of 100 Jin is a huge stunt in itself. Even if he doesn’t follow the path of regular inspirational sports movies, YOLO will easily break out in the Spring Festival file. Secondly, Hi, Mom became the champion of the Spring Festival with the trend of dark horse. It is also one of the suspense whether Jia Ling can reproduce the myth of the Spring Festival box office after three years.
Han Han seems to have given up going his own way after Four Seas suffered a box office failure, hoping to reproduce the successful case of the Spring Festival comedy with the original cast. Shen Teng, Andrew, Wei Xiang, Zhang Benyu and other characters continued to join Pegasus 2, while young people such as Adam and Sean joined in the sequel. In April, 2023, the comedy film Unfamiliar Road in Life started with Adam, and the effect was quite good, with a box office of 1.1 billion+.Like Pegasus 2, this film was produced by Tingdong Film Company. Han Han may hope to play the comedy box office potential of a new generation of actors like Xiaoxing Yi.

In the past few films, we can see some literary projection of Han Han’s personal life experience and sentiment, but Pegasus 2 is probably Han Han’s first pure commercial film, especially after Four Seas suffered a fiasco in the Spring Festival, Pegasus 2 will probably be a more moderate and popular comedy film.

"Article 20" tells the story of Han Ming, a middle-aged prosecutor, who tried to catch the last bus of his career and work in the city hospital, but was involved in a case with huge differences, and at the same time his family was facing similar tests.

"Article 20" will probably be the one that faces the most "trials" by the public during the Spring Festival. The theme of "self-defense" focused by the film itself is a hot topic in the society, and the form of dozens of star headshots on movie posters is both hot and unstable. Although director Zhang Yimou made a lot of money at the box office in last year’s "Man Jiang Hong", he also suffered a large-scale negative public opinion because of this film. It is worth mentioning that "Article 20" is also Zhao Liying’s first film since "Journey to the West to the Daughter Country".

Among the live-action movies in the Spring Festival, YOLO’s Pegasus 2 and Article 20 are the top three in the early stage, and the box office champion is also likely to emerge from these three movies. Starting with 1 billion, 2 billion is promising, and more than 3 billion depends on the right time and the right place.
"The Movie Emperor" tells the story of Hong Kong superstar Liu Weichi (Andy Lau) who co-produced a rural film with director Lin Hao (Ning Hao) in order to win the film emperor for 40 years, which triggered a series of ridiculous farce and showed the stories of all kinds of people in the entertainment circle. This film was once shown in the "premiere" unit of Pingyao International Film Festival, and its reputation was above average.

The Movie Emperor is a rather ill-fated book, which has been changed several times. Ning Hao’s last cinema feature film was Crazy Alien in 2019, which has been away from the market for a long time. The Movie Emperor is very important for director Ning Hao. This film became attached to Andy Lau again after Crazy Stone, which was the only mainland film in the "Asian New Star Director" program invested by Andy Lau. The Movie Emperor shows the entertainment circle in the form of absurd comedy, which obviously adds a lot of what Ning Hao saw, heard and thought in his film career.

Past achievements are not enough to guarantee. In 2024, these past winners are also facing different challenges.

The development history of the series "Bear Haunted" is completely tied to the Spring Festival file. At present, it has formed a golden signboard in the Spring Festival file, and it has never fallen behind in the past ten years. From the beginning, a box office of 200 million has gradually grown. In the Spring Festival file of 2023, "Bear Haunted with My Bear Core" won nearly 1.5 billion box office and became the champion of the animated box office of the Spring Festival file.

The thickness of this IP is also increasing with the box office rising year by year. The early "Bear Haunted" film is a typical sub-supply animated theatrical version, with the target clearly defined as parent-child audience, which is better than stable and continuous output, but the breakthrough in content theme and visual effects production is not significant; With the addition of sci-fi elements to Fantasy Space, Primitive Times and Wild Continent, Return to Earth and Come with My Bear Core focus more on the theme of science and technology, and the audience of the film series has been broadened day by day, and the production level of domestic animation has also advanced by leaps and bounds in this decade, so that during the release of Return to Earth and Come with My Bear Core, there are voices lamenting that "domestic sci-fi will actually haunt bears in the future".

Expanding from parent-child audience to all-age market is a solid step taken by bears, and it is also an important reason why "Come with My Bear Core" can suddenly break out and get 50% higher box office income than its previous work. "Return to Earth" achieved a breakthrough in sci-fi scenes and action dramas, while "Accompany Me Bear Core" focused on emotional destruction with artificial intelligence, which truly achieved a double breakthrough in visual expression and plot expression. As a stable factor in the annual Spring Festival file, it is very rare for the bear haunt series to take this step.

Boonie Bears: Time Twist: Logger Vick is an ordinary programmer, but he often dreams of a strange forest and two bears. It was not until he visited a big client with his boss that he finally remembered that he was a small tour guide in the forest and was given a chance to choose his life again by chance. In order to save Xiong Er, the big bear in the old timeline, Logger Vick begins a wonderful adventure in time and space.

10th Anniversary Feelings, Parallel Space-time Adventure, Is this better than Marvel Comics? Boonie Bears: Time Twist, released on the occasion of the 10th anniversary, must have inherited the successful experience of Return to Earth and Come with My Bear, and it will be a new work full of feelings and animation skills.
From the external environment, 2024 will become the single Spring Festival file in recent years if there are no heavy new films to make up for it. Although Article 20, YOLO, Pegasus 2 and The Movie Emperor belong to different vertical types, they are all comedy movies with modern background. Although Viva La Vida is the final chapter of the trilogy of life and the adaptation of documentary stories, it also contains comedy elements. The market lacks the sci-fi represented by Wandering Earth 2, the adult animation represented by Deep Sea, the war blockbuster represented by Watergate Bridge in Operation Red Sea, and there are no costume types such as Man Jiang Hong.

If you want to see other elements, it seems that you can only choose Boonie Bears: Time Twist.

Based on various factors, as long as the film quality does not deteriorate, "Boonie Bears: Time Twist" is likely to become one of the winners of this Spring Festival. At present, it wants to see the data leading the schedule, which also confirms the amazing effect of this IP.

Conclusion:

With the current lineup, the sales of Spring Festival stalls in 2024 are less than those in 2023. Last year, the market was led by Wandering Earth 2 and Manjianghong, and various types such as Unknown, Deep Sea and Bears’ haunt were in full bloom, which could better meet the needs of different types of audiences. Of course, there is another possibility, that is, in 2024, there will be many modern-themed films that successfully detonate public sentiment and reproduce the myth of explosion.

It may be better for the film market if one or two new films can be booked. Director Tsui Hark and starring Sean Xiao’s "The Legend of the Condor Heroes" and Nezha’s sequel "The Devil Boy Makes a Sea" are probably not finished in the post-production, so why can’t Jackie Chan’s "Legend" catch up? Grab the parent-child market "Pleasant Goat and the Guardian of Big Big Wolf"? There is still time before the Spring Festival, and it is not known whether there are any new films.

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