Investment chaos in the film industry: too many people want to invest in a small amount of money
From 58.com Pictures, Jumei Pictures to Tuniu Pictures, these days, entering the film and television industry to make money has become a standard for many Internet companies, no matter what your main business is. And everyone is very smart. Although it takes time and effort to control a project, it seems that investing in a project does not require any time and professional requirements. As long as you follow the right project, you can almost make money lying down.
It is this atmosphere that makes it easy for a movie to have three, five, seven, eight, or even more than a dozen producers. However, there are less than 300 projects that can be released in theaters every year, and only 20% of them make money. It is not easy to be among the producers of these fifty or sixty movies.
There are too many people and too little porridge, and even less good porridge. Many new companies have been in the "Big Brother, please guide me" stage, using funds and connections to exchange for a pitiful amount of investment shares. But this is not 100% insurance, because not to mention market newcomers, even veterans like Huayi and LeTV Pictures have also made mistakes. "The Crossing" once made LeTV lose all its money.
So in this film investment industry, experience and connections are one aspect, but more importantly, one's own unique vision and judgment criteria. Whether it is a new player or an old driver, as long as you can clear the fog of noise and find the differentiated positioning, you can always find those overlooked good projects.
Why did we encounter projects such as "Six Lanes Cafe", "Anti-Corruption Storm 2", and "The Memory Master" in our first attempt?
Shanwei Pictures is a good example. Although the company was established in 2010, it was mainly based on the movie ticketing level before. Since 2015, it has sought transformation and adopted a "self-revolution" like a hero's arm-cutting for the original "Love Movie Network" ticketing. Under the sharp edge of BAT, it has taken a different approach and built a bridge between movies, theaters and fans by providing software and hardware technology operation and maintenance services for theaters. With such a strategic shift, it is natural to enter the film investment and distribution business.
As a new player in the industry, Shanwei Pictures has a very good vision in film investment. This year, Shanwei Pictures' investment projects include "Six Lanes Cafe", "Anti-Corruption Storm 2", "The Memory Master", etc.
Among them, "Six Lanes Cafe" is jointly produced by the mainland and Taiwan, and is produced by China Television Entertainment Investment Group Co., Ltd., which created the domestic youth film box office record with Zhao Wei's debut work "So Young". It is adapted and directed by the well-known best-selling author Wu Ziyun (Fujii Shu), and brings together powerful actors Dong Zijian, Yan Zhuoling, new generation Lin Bohong, Ouyang Nini, who are highly recognized by the Golden Horse Awards, as well as Huang Zijiao, Huang Denghui, Zhang Shaohuai, etc.
"Six Lanes Cafe" is adapted from the popular IP of the same name. This IP has a score of 7.8 on Douban. The film was shortlisted for four nominations in the Media Focus Unit of the Film Channel of the Shanghai International Film Festival. In the end, Lin Bohong and Yan Zhuoling won the two honors of the most media-focused new actor and actress respectively.
Some media said that "Six Lanes Coffee Shop" is the most "dark horse potential" youth-themed movie this year. Recently, the movie "Six Lanes Coffee Shop" exposed the theme song of the movie "Half a Goodbye", sung by Chinese pop queen Stefanie Sun. "Six Lanes Coffee Shop" was released nationwide on July 29, 2016.
Another film invested by Shanwei Films, "Anti-Corruption Storm 2", is a sequel. In 2014, "Anti-Corruption Storm" won good reputation and box office. The film boldly touched on sensitive corruption issues and had action elements such as gun battles and chases, contributing a new film type to the market.
As a comprehensive upgrade of the first film, "Anti-Corruption Storm 2" has added a golden combination of Hong Kong films such as Zhang Zhilin, Zhou Yimin, Cai Shaofen and Lam Pou-yee in addition to Louis Koo. The film is produced by Raymond Wong and directed by Alex Lam. The unique genre and super cast make the film worth looking forward to.
Another film, "The Memory Master", is also directed by Chen Zhengdao and co-starred by Huang Bo, Xu Jinglei, Duan Yihong, Yang Zishan, and Tiffany Hsu. It tells a suspenseful crime story about memory extraction in the future world. It can be called a rare high-IQ suspense film in the domestic film genre.
As the second part of the Master series, The Memory Master continues the high quality standards of the previous work. The film story takes place in a future space with extremely advanced technology, and concepts such as memory extraction and reloading will also debut, making the film a combination of science fiction, suspense, crime and other eye-catching factors. From the cast list, Huang Bo is one of the few powerful male actors in China with guaranteed box office performance. Duan Yihong and Xu Jinglei are both powerful actors. Whether it is the subject matter or the cast list, it is a sincere film. The film is expected to be released at the end of the year.
Differentiated investment in a different way
Beijing New Film Association Film General Manager Zhou Tiedong once said that film is a combination of artistic creation and operation management. From the perspective of investors, what matters is the product value rather than the work value. In the eyes of investors, there is only a distinction between successful and failed films, not good and bad films.
Although this statement is a bit extreme, the core value is good. For investors, they must be able to accurately judge the commercial value and return on investment of a project, which is related to its artistic quality, but not strictly proportional. There are many art films that have high artistic value, but the market acceptance is very low.
Of course, the ideal situation is to invest in products with high artistic and commercial value, which places extremely high demands on the professionalism and market judgment ability of investors.
Although Shanwei Films is new to film investment, it is a veritable "old man" since it entered the industry in 2010. Aiyingdian.com, operated by Shanwei Pictures, once became the online ticketing platform with the highest ticket sales in South China. Years of operating experience and a large amount of data accumulation also allow Shanwei Pictures to accurately predict the box office revenue of movies. Shanwei has its own set of judgment criteria for what factors will make a movie successful and what kind of movies with good sales potential are likely to get high box office.
Wu Dongyi, the founder and chairman of Shanwei Pictures, loves movies very much. A glimpse of the leopard shows that the Shanwei team's rich experience in the film industry is not just talk on paper, but a long-lasting love and attention to the film industry over the years.
This also makes their investment style very clear, and it is obviously different from other new players in the market. Shanwei does not blindly choose popular themes, such as youth romance films, nor does it blindly promote popular blockbusters, such as well-known directors and big investment works. Instead, it takes a different approach and chooses many seemingly inconspicuous movies that have been proven to have great potential afterwards.
This is due to Shanwei’s years of experience and data in the film industry. As we said before, on the one hand, it is due to its strict process and evaluation standards for film selection. After judging through the professional knowledge and experience provided by the film review committee, it is combined with the Internet big data to provide an objective perspective for verification or rebuttal, so as to achieve reasonable evaluation and selection of project targets.
Film selection criteria: director, actor, story, and financial backer behind the scenes?
So, what is a good project? Great director? Jiang Wen’s "One Step Away" and John Woo’s "The Crossing" also failed; great actor? "Warring States" had Sun Honglei and Wu Zhenyu but also lost all their money; story? "The Golden Age" has a good story, but it is still not welcomed by the market. As for the financial backer, last year's "Little Door God" had BAT at the same time, but the final box office was only 70 million.
So, taking any one of them out alone cannot be a magic weapon for a movie to win, especially big stars and big IP, which are the most important factors for many investment companies and are often the least reliable. The low-cost "The Return of the Great Sage" and the "Heart Labyrinth" without any stars have achieved unexpected success, while the highly anticipated "Three-Body" project has become a pit.
Wang Guowei, president of the National Film Fund, once said that the subject matter and story account for a large part in judging the feasibility of a movie, followed by artistic creation, such as the director team and the production team, and then the publicity and distribution team and the publicity hotspots contained therein. If these five aspects each have a weight score, then they are decreasing from the beginning to the end, and the most important ones are the subject matter and story.
For a new project, if the score of these points added together exceeds a certain standard, the movie can be invested. Film is an industrialized system. If one link is good, it needs to be combined with another link. Therefore, when evaluating a project, it is necessary to consider all aspects comprehensively, rather than just one point being particularly good.
The ideas of several projects currently invested by Shanwei are roughly similar to this. Taken alone, none of "Six Lanes Cafe", "Anti-Corruption Storm 2" and "The Master of Memory" can be considered as big IPs, but these films have their highlights and potential, and they are all released at the right time.
Pure financial film investment will be eliminated, and comprehensive service providers will be more competitive in negotiations
In addition, for Shanwei, another great advantage of film investment is the resources behind it. With the completion of the film industry process, pure financial film investment will be gradually eliminated in the future, and film financing needs to be structured. All project parties like investors with resources. No one likes people who just want to lie down and share money. Only those who can make money together are the best partners. Shanwei Pictures' strategic upgrade decision is to explore new modes of Internet film promotion and distribution, combine it with film production and production, further improve its own film industry ecology and attract more resources.
That is to say, when Shanwei Pictures invests in projects, its bargaining chips are not just capital, but it can also provide full-process services for films from production to final distribution and release, which is exactly where its value lies.
