
Author | Amy Wang
In 2011, seven companies, including LeTV, Tencent, Excited, Thunder, Storm Video, PPTV and PPS, jointly established a movie network cinema distribution alliance, and put forward the concept of "unified online time, unified broadcast quality and unified tariff" to promote the pay-on-demand mode of film and television dramas. At that time, there were less than 7,000 screens in China cinemas, and the annual output of movies was about 500. Almost half of them could not escape the fate of a one-day tour. This cooperation is the first time that a long video has moved from behind the scenes to the stage. On the one hand, it officially opened the content payment, on the other hand, it publicly declared war on piracy.
Ten years later, in 2021, Ai Tengyou co-sponsored the 2021 online movie Spring Festival, announcing that two blockbuster films, The Diary of Making a Rich, directed by Tang Jili, starring Wang Baoqiang and directed and directed by The Legend of Shaolin Temple and Song Xiaobao, and starring Sha Yi, Mary and Zray, will land on three platforms on New Year’s Day in PVOD mode. At the same time, the three platforms also officially announced more than 40 new online movies and limited cinema blockbusters, and made concerted efforts to "online Spring Festival files".
At this time, although the number of cinemas in China is nearly 80,000, and the annual output of movies is 650, China has become the second largest ticket warehouse in the world, but the problems of difficult film arrangement, high screen vacancy rate and high operating cost of cinemas still exist.

In the past ten years, the Internet and content industry in China have developed at a high speed, and the copyright protection war has been fought round after round. Content payment has finally changed from bud to mainstream, and the dream of one person, one vote to order new cinema films on the Internet has blossomed.
After 2020, almost no one doubts about watching movies on the Internet (PVOD). Whether the epidemic is over or not, the pattern that cinemas are the only mainstream distribution channel for big movies is changing, along with the relationship between upstream studios and cinemas, and this change is permanent.
Streaming media is rapidly reshaping its right to speak in film distribution around the world, and the commercial achievements of subscription payment prove that the new era of film distribution is striding forward.

The "variables" of the Spring Festival file are still there, and both online and offline are prepared.
Filmmakers dare not relax until the last moment of the Spring Festival.
After the collective withdrawal of Spring Festival movies, the closure of cinemas and the strict attendance rate a few days before the release last year, the 2021 Spring Festival movie is always burdened with great uncertainty.
Compared with the movie box office, the bigger proposition is that during the whole Spring Festival holiday, all the people in China may have to cancel many offline entertainment arrangements because of the social restrictions of the epidemic. In response to the epidemic prevention policy, migrant workers who choose to spend the New Year on the spot have to endure the pain of not being reunited with their relatives … Whether this Spring Festival file can provide sufficient and rich entertainment content choices for the people of the whole country is a test for the entire film and television industry.
This year, seven blockbusters, including Detective Chinatown 3, Hi, Mom and A Writer’s Odyssey, competed for the Spring Festival stalls in the cinema, and The Legend of Shaolin Temple’s "Diary of Making a fortune" was first published online at the beginning of the year to wish the New Year.

However, cinemas are still full of variables during the Spring Festival holiday. For example, Beijing has just issued a regulation that the attendance rate of cinemas should not exceed 50% during the Spring Festival holiday, which may be followed by other cities in the country. In addition, the uncertainty of the outbreak may also make some cinemas in high-risk areas unable to open, which tests the temporary resilience of all parties concerned, such as cinemas, third-party ticketing platforms, marketers and filmmakers, and of course directly affects the itinerary of the audience. When offline viewing is affected, whether online viewing can withstand it is also a major test for Ai Tengyou.
Last year, online and offline, I was at a loss for emergencies. Except for a few films that choose to be distributed online, the new film resources of the whole Internet cinema obviously cannot meet the huge online demand. On many occasions this year, the relevant persons in charge of Aitengyou’s three platforms all said that the new anxiety in long video movies was not alleviated until The Eight Hundred went online. It can be seen that, first of all, for the entire film industry, online and offline have always been interdependent and complementary; Secondly, when the demand for online movies is increasing rapidly and Internet viewing is becoming more and more mainstream, the filmmakers who choose to distribute the films in different lines are also very courageous and business-minded.
In order to cope with the Spring Festival holiday full of variables but peak demand with offline, after more than a year of exploration and attempt, the strategies of iQiyi and other three platforms have become quite mature. In previous years, online Spring Festival files were mostly based on operations. This year, the three platforms took the initiative. In addition to selecting new online movies with quality and theme suitable for the Spring Festival broadcast in advance, they also actively cooperated with cinema blockbusters to conduct on-demand in PVOD mode. In an interview, Li Jinhan, the producer of the film "Diary of Making a fortune", said that it was decided to release it online in August and September last year. It can be seen that this year, filmmakers and video platforms have not been idle about how to solve the impact of objective factors on the film industry.

The Internet has come to this day because of its undifferentiated ability to provide diversified choices for diversified people. The arrival of watching new movies online is more powerful for those who have no choice.
First of all, the big screen can’t cover the audience who want to watch new movies so much, especially the users in low-tier cities and rural areas below the third line, who can order new movies on their mobile phones indiscriminately; Followed by art theaters or niche fans, who suffer from high reputation but low film scheduling, can now pay for their favorite art films to CALL. Of course, the online cinema market is far more than serving these segments. When more and more large new films are distributed online, buying tickets online to watch movies will also become the viewing choice of all online users.
Online and offline participation in the Spring Festival stalls will protect the important ceremony of watching new films and blockbusters during the Spring Festival, and also bring incremental distribution and consumption to China films.

Online movie distribution also requires differentiated operations.
Last year, Universal Trolls World Tour took the lead in the distribution of streaming media in PVOD mode, which caused a polarized discussion in the industry. At that time, cinemas and film industry had not clearly realized how much COVID-19 had dealt a blow to the film industry. Streaming media soon proved itself, and many shelved blockbusters came out, and many studios on the verge of bankruptcy came back to life. At the same time, big studios such as Universal and Warner did not fail. Nowadays, PVOD is popular all over the world, and more and more top filmmakers in Hollywood begin to embrace streaming media boldly.
Tang Jili, the director of The Legend of Shaolin Temple, is the first to test the PVOD mode in the Spring Festival. He thinks that the Internet and the cinema are equal media channels, and it is very good for people who make content to choose one more choice. He does not think that choosing the Internet is a compromise. He also stressed that in the future, movies will no longer be distinguished by their distribution channels. It can be seen that many top filmmakers are willing to choose the Internet, and many times the society’s perception of the separation between cinemas and streaming media is one-sided and extreme.
However, we have to admit that the PVOD VOD model is still in its early stage, and there are not many mature case references about what type, what theme, how many movies are suitable for the network, and how much commercial space it can have, which may be the main reason why many filmmakers hesitate. At present, the split box office record of online movies is 56 million for daoist magic (about 160 million for cinema box office). The fact is that the cost of many cinema blockbusters may exceed this number. How much box office volume can PVOD create? How much commercial value does it bring? Still waiting for more adventurous filmmakers to "eat crabs." I have to admit, how many treasures can be dug from the large plate with a unit price of over 100 million members, both for content and courage.
When iQiyi tried to release movies in PVOD mode, it simultaneously launched an online cinema brand "Super Cinema" in July last year. "Super Cinema" is not a "big network" as understood by the public, but an online cinema with more brand operation thinking opened in the content pay circuit. At present, it is only open to cinema-level movies that meet certain production standards and are willing to choose the network premiere.
Of course, the content in the "super cinema" is higher than that of ordinary online movies in terms of time and capital investment, and the income of movies released by online cinemas is naturally higher. At present, "Super Cinema" has launched the action comedy "Flying Dragon Crossing the River" directed by Jing Wong, the high-profile literary film "Spring Tide" and "Spring River Plumbing", the special effect IP blockbuster "Journey", the overseas animated film "Spongebob: Rescue Adventure" and other new films, and the addition of two comedy films created by a strong team in 2021 "Online Spring Festival File" also shows the strong tolerance and distribution potential of online cinemas.

Differentiated brand strategy is another difference in the trend of film online distribution mode. Last year, Iqiyi successfully built a mystery drama brand named "Mist Theater". Now when it comes to Mist, users naturally associate it with the best suspense drama series in China, and online cinemas need a strong brand to carry the brand precipitation with good reputation in the future. Unlike "Mist", online cinemas need more types of themes. At present, what video websites can do is to continuously accumulate and break through one theme type by one, and finally create a gold-lettered signboard for online distribution of movies. Iqiyi Super Cinema is a prototype, but it still has a long way to go.

Ten years of online cinema, the fight is technology and mode.
Moving cinemas to the Internet is not a practice after the COVID-19 epidemic, but an idea that has emerged since the advent of the Internet.
In fact, ten years ago, the movie channel Movie Network launched a single-point payment viewing mode very ahead of schedule. It was the first to test Jiang Wen’s "Let the Bullets Fly", which created 200,000 hits in 20 days at the price of 3-5 yuan on demand, bringing nearly one million online incomes. Unfortunately, at that time, the long video scuffle, the source of income was advertising, and online piracy was also very serious. Single-point payment was not promoted and gradually replaced by membership.
In addition to Internet companies, many cinemas have also tried to invest in research and development of apps and websites to build their own online viewing ports to meet the needs of viewers to watch movies at home, but in the end there were no successful cases due to immature technologies or models.
Gao Qunyao, who led Wanda’s acquisition of AMC and Legendary Pictures and served as the CEO of Wanda Culture Group’s international business department, witnessed the development of China’s film market in various stages as a professional manager, and saw the future trend of "cinema+mobile terminal" dual-line distribution. After leaving Wanda in 2017, he founded "mobile cinema". The main idea of the mobile cinema APP is to move the cinema screen to the mobile phone, and the audience needs to buy tickets to watch the movie. At present, the resources of new films in mobile cinemas are relatively limited, and large-scale resources are relatively scarce. After several years of development, users are still testing the water in small quantities.
Joy Media, which is deeply tied with directors such as Ning Hao, Xú Zhēng, Wong Kar-wai, Chen Kexin, Gu Changwei, Zhang Yibai, Zhang Yimou, etc., is also very optimistic about the online distribution market, and vigorously promotes its streaming media product Joy Premiere APP, mainly showing its films on demand, such as "Crazy Alien" Lost in Russia, etc., and has tried to pay for it on this platform. However, due to the limited amount of content produced by Huanxi Media and the unstable content supply, the current installed capacity of Huanxi Premiere APP is also hovering at a low level.

The exploration of online distribution in the whole film industry proves that strong technical ability and stable and sustainable business model are essential elements of online distribution, which requires long-term and large investment and has a high entry threshold. Nowadays, whether it is technical ability, capital strength, traffic base or payment mode, Aitengyou is the most likely platform to undertake the online distribution of movies.
In the past ten years, video platforms have seen their movie reserves go from zero to tens of thousands, and their membership has gone from zero to over 100 million, from movie broadcasting terminals to the creation of online movie commercial market, and then to the landing of online cinema brands such as "Super Cinema". On the one hand, it increases the film distribution mode and income increment for the upstream, and cultivates reserve talents for China films; on the other hand, it cultivates high-viscosity movie-watching users, and stimulates the arrival of the film and television focus era.
In addition, technically, the video platform is also ready to be put in place. First, with the popularity of smart TV screens, Chinese began to return to the living room, especially during the Spring Festival. It is a very common entertainment consumption scene for the whole family to get together and watch a family movie in the living room, and this scene can be easily realized by projection. Iqiyi simultaneously launched the VR version of the "Online Spring Festival File" film Adventure, which can meet the audience with higher immersive viewing needs. Second, the current video platform has been able to accurately distribute technology through technological innovations such as AI and big data, subdivide content and accurately find user groups, greatly improving the payment rate.
In the future, what will the cinema pattern become, and whether people still need cinemas? This is a question asked by more and more people after the epidemic began. Senior foreign research institutions and executives of film and television companies agree that cinemas will not die, but they really need to be changed. In the future, capital is likely to bet more and more on the investment of high-end cinemas with luxury facilities, because the viewing experience of these high-end cinemas in heavy industry movies can not be replaced by mobile phones and televisions.

In fact, this trend is very obvious in China. In the past few years, the box office figures and proportions of many special cinemas, including IMAX, Dolby Hall and China Giant Screen, have shown an upward trend. The core reason is that consumers are demanding more audio-visual experience and are willing to pay higher fares for such cinemas with better audio-visual effects. At the same time, those cinemas that don’t pay attention to service and pay attention to the broadcast quality and viewing environment are also scored low or even eliminated by more and more viewers.
Online viewing has become a long-standing choice for viewing consumption in the future. Under this general trend, film and television companies will pay more attention to online layout, while cinemas should change the mentality of "seller’s market" and focus on improving the offline viewing experience.
The reform and transformation of the film industry has always existed, and the Internet has only played an accelerating role. The offline distribution and online distribution of movies are parallel, and streaming media and cinemas explore and innovate their own service models, which is actually an inevitable result of the D2C era of content industry. Whether online cinema or physical cinema, in the face of a larger market, each has its own emphasis. Finding its own subdivided track and digging to the extreme should be the only way for the sound development of China film market.
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