＂Wandering Earth 2＂ derivatives crowdfunding broke 100 million ＂Deep Sea＂ movies were sold as soon as the blind box was released. Can the future film and television industry live on derivatives？
The Spring Festival movies are being shown, and the topics behind them are also constant. The hard sci-fi romantic plot of the domestic sci-fi blockbuster "Wandering Earth 2" touched many audiences, and after leaving the cinema, they began to look for peripheral derivatives for an "impulse consumption".
At present, the amount of crowdfunding around Wandering Earth 2 has exceeded 100 million yuan on Taobao platform at 1 pm on the 30th, and it is still growing. Digital life cards, planetary engines, exoskeleton armor, door frame robots and mechanical puppies have all become popular derivatives.
If most of the peripheral derivatives of Wandering Earth 2 are still in pre-sale, the peripheral blind box of another Spring Festival movie Deep Sea will be released simultaneously with the movie, in which the protagonist and sea otters become small hands, which is particularly cute to hold in their hands.
In recent years, under the influence of high-quality content, consumers’ demand for film and television derivatives has become increasingly strong, and even some hot things are hard to find around. However, from the absolute value, the value of derivatives still has room to be excavated again-compared with overseas, Hollywood’s film and television derivatives have a complete range, and they are getting more and more money. Apart from hand-made models, the theme park with huge volume is the largest derivative project. It can be seen that the peripheral derivatives market of China film and television industry has great imagination and development potential in the future.
In four years, the sales of derivatives in The Wandering Earth have increased tenfold.
Four years ago, when "Wandering Earth 1" was just released, the reporter interviewed a cultural and creative enterprise "Bronze Master" in Hangzhou. They used traditional copper products to build astronauts and personnel carriers in the film, which was greatly welcomed by the crew and fans. At that time, Qu Chuxiao, the starring actor, was very happy to learn that he could give a pure copper personnel carrier model that he liked.
This is only a part of the surrounding area of The Wandering Earth. According to the data of Alibaba Fish’s "Make Some New Goods" platform, in 2019, the amount of crowdfunding projects around The Wandering Earth, such as flint key chains, loading car models and pilot badges, reached 7.69 million yuan.
Four years later, no one expected that this figure has increased tenfold, and it is still growing. By the end of the pre-sale, it is expected to exceed 150 million yuan.
With the release of "Wandering Earth 2", the relevant surrounding areas were also launched immediately. In addition to the refrigerator stickers and assembled models launched by some licensees simultaneously with the film, a large number of products were sold through popular crowdfunding projects at present, mainly including MOSS model, mechanical dog stupid model and digital life card. The price is not low, but many people are famous.
Although it will take 120 days, and although the government has issued an open letter to hope that everyone will "consume rationally", the amount of crowdfunding has exceeded 100 million yuan like a runaway horse, heading for a higher figure. According to the current data, there are more than 430,000 participants, and the average consumption of each participant is close to that of 250 yuan.
Even though the platform has repeatedly reminded that due to limited production capacity, the delivery time may be postponed to November, fans still ignore it. On the one hand, the sci-fi movie IP itself has a strong logic of peripheral consumption inertia; on the other hand, China sci-fi fans have waited too long for sci-fi movies that truly belong to China and are willing to spend money to support this IP.
Not only official derivatives, but also many brands and companies related to Wandering Earth 2 have participated in it. Aosha Intelligent, a robot technology company, launched an exoskeleton lottery at the Weibo and received more than 100,000 reposts; Xugong Group, the prototype excavator in the movie, also launched the same model lottery; The rambler who is responsible for making headphones in the movie has also been urged by netizens to "hurry up with the same paragraph".
The synchronous derivatives market from six months to now has great potential in China.
Since 2002, when Zhang Yimou’s Hero began to test derivatives around the water, the whole industry has paid more and more attention to derivatives. Derivatives have gradually become a project with independent commercial value from the previous marketing accessories.
In order to understand the whole process of derivative development in China from design, development to crowdfunding, the reporter interviewed Huaguoshan Media, headquartered in Hangzhou, which owns a special derivative development company, participated in the derivative development of this year’s Spring Festival movie Deep Sea, and launched a crowdfunding project in bilibili.
"Wandering Earth 2, the enthusiastic purchase of derivatives around the film, is a continuous expression of the audience’s recognition and love for the film. This enthusiasm is the strongest when it comes out of the cinema." CEO Zhou Jianmin told reporters that they predict that more and more derivatives will be released simultaneously with the film in the future, waiting for the audience to "impulse consumption" after watching it.
"In the past, after the film was released, the box office was on fire, and then it was authorized to make derivatives such as hand-made dolls, so there would be a time difference of six months to one year. In recent years, derivative development has been involved since the early stage, and it can be launched almost simultaneously with the whole process of film production and release. " Zhou Jianmin introduced that they had cooperated with Guoman’s film "The Green Snake of the White Snake" to develop a number of surrounding areas the year before last, and also through crowdfunding in bilibili, which reached more than 7 million in 15 days and finally exceeded 13 million. During the Spring Festival, they also participated in the post-production of Wandering Earth 2 and Deep Sea, and their in-depth participation in film production provided them with experience in developing derivatives, and they also had stronger confidence in the works themselves.
Zhou Jianmin believes that the rise of Guoman in recent years has spawned the expansion of the derivatives market, and the main audience of the film market, the "Z generation" group, has also made new changes in the consumption mode of film IP. Some surveys show that the "Z generation" group has strong feelings and patriotism, attaches importance to the pleasure brought by consumption, and is willing to pay for happiness and interest.
Secondly, derivatives can provide fans with space for secondary creation. When developing the derivative periphery of "Green Snake", a high-end "Soldier" hand-made product was introduced, which was made of silicone, felt close to real skin, and the clothes were also real materials, which could be replaced later. Although it was expensive, many fans still paid the bill.
In addition, derivatives can also arouse emotional resonance of the audience. "Many people will put them on the table and often play with them. When playing, the movie scenes will be revisited and emotional memories will be awakened."
He introduced that at present, domestic derivatives are relatively successful, which can almost achieve about 2% of the box office income of movies. "Wandering Earth 2 has exceeded 2.6 billion yuan at the box office, and its derivative income has exceeded 4%. It can be said that it is quite excellent and can be called a benchmark."
However, this ratio is still far from abroad. According to public information, only 30%~40% of the profits of overseas film industry come from the box office, and the rest come from the income from film derivatives and copyright sales.
Take the Star Wars series as an example. Since the success of the first movie in 1977, this super IP has continuously developed peripheral derivatives, covering fans of all ages and different consumption levels.
As of August, 2022, the derivative income of Star Wars reached 42.2 billion dollars (about 286.3 billion yuan), while the box office income of movies was 10.3 billion dollars, and the derivative income was four times of the box office income.
The superhero created by Marvel Comics has already stepped off the screen and become a desk ornament for many people. Disneyland and Universal Studios, which are globally distributed, have developed film derivatives to the extreme.
Due to the impact of the epidemic, the development of China’s film industry stagnated a few years ago. However, the box office and market of this year’s Spring Festival file gave confidence to practitioners, and this wave of derivatives "hot sale" also showed practitioners the development potential of systematic construction and industrial operation of future film IP.
Zhou Jianmin believes that as long as the products developed meet the market demand and users’ aesthetics, the extra increment of IP derivatives of film and television will definitely feed back IP, and it is not a castle in the air for the domestic film and television industry to make money from derivatives.
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