The Qingming Festival is approaching, and many new films are ready to be released. According to the Lighthouse Professional Edition, as of 15:00 on April 3, the box office of this year's Qingming Festival (including previews and pre-sales) has exceeded 57 million yuan. Among them, "Silent Love", "My World Movie" and "Sunny Flower" are temporarily ranked in the top three of the box office list.
Data source: Lighthouse Professional Edition
This year, the Qingming Festival (April 4-6) has a sufficient supply of films with rich and diverse themes. "Silent Love", which topped the pre-sale list, tells the touching story of the hearing-impaired father Xiao Ma and his daughter Mu Mu protecting each other; "Minecraft Movie" opens a new path for game fans to let their feelings shine into reality; "Sunny Flower" continues the popularity of female themes and focuses on the plight of a mother who has been released from prison. In addition, films such as "Fox Hunting Operation", "Sunshine Shining on Youth", "Imperfect Escape", "Mobile Suit Gundam", and "Hot", including several small and medium-cost thriller horror films such as "Mountain Village Ghost Stories", "Red Wedding Dress", and "Fengmen Village Horror", also provide a rich choice space for different types of audiences.
Realistic themes
Perhaps as a holiday that is not so happy and festive in the traditional sense, the atmosphere of Qingming Festival for commemorating the deceased and its slightly melancholy temperament also make it easier for more serious themes to resonate and connect with the audience at this time.
Most of the films released during the Qingming Festival this year continue to focus on realistic themes. Produced by Rao Xiaozhi and starring Xiao Yang and Chun Xia, "Sunshine in Youth" tells the identity dilemma of small people with black humor. Starting from the workplace dilemma that ordinary workers can deeply resonate with, it extends to the care for the daily life and spiritual world of special groups, presenting a "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" with a strong local flavor.
Xiao Yang plays a mental patient in "Sunshine of Youth"
In "Love Silent", Zhang Yixing plays a deaf man who needs to depend on his daughter. Although he cannot express his love in words, he uses actions to provide a support for his daughter. His delicate and silent performance removes the halo of an idol and also reflects the difficulty of survival for special groups of people.
Zhang Yixing plays a deaf-mute father in "Silent Love"
In "Sunny Flowers" directed by Feng Xiaogang, Zhao Liying plays a single mother who takes risks for her disabled daughter and is sent to jail. After being released from prison, she faces difficulties in life. She and other female characters played by Lan Xiya, Chuo Ni, Wang Ju, Cheng Xiao, etc. support each other and show the brilliance of female life.
Zhao Liying leads a group of female stars to play unyielding women in adversity
In addition, "Fox Hunt" starring Tony Leung and Duan Yihong is adapted from a once sensational major financial fraud case, bringing the thrill of overseas pursuit to the big screen.
Popular actors who used to play leading roles in commercial films played marginal characters, which also increased the popularity and attractions of the films. The pre-sale data also shows that the pre-sale results of "Silent Love" and "Sunny Flowers" are among the best. The trailer and related materials of Zhang Yixing playing the hearing-impaired father, Zhao Liying performing a flexible hand language dance and related clips of making money have been more widely disseminated through short videos and other means, attracting attention.
Small period with great energy
The Qingming Festival is not a big period in the traditional sense, but in recent years, it has been favored by more and more small and medium-sized films. Many similar films have previously verified the feasibility of "small period + long life cycle" during the Qingming Festival.
For example, in 2021, "My Sister" relied on word-of-mouth to eventually reach a box office of 860 million yuan. Last year, the literary and artistic "The Grass and Trees" released during the Qingming Festival eventually earned 121 million yuan at the box office. Another realistic film "Let's Rock the Sun Together" was withdrawn from the fierce competition during the Spring Festival, but also earned 274 million yuan at the box office in the following spring. In 2024, driven by Hayao Miyazaki's "How Do You Want to Live", the Qingming Festival broke the record of the Qingming Festival in Chinese film history with a box office of 840 million yuan in 3 days.
"My Sister", the box office champion of the Qingming Festival in 2021
In recent years, the film market has become more and more dependent on the schedule. On the one hand, there is the daily sluggish box office market, and on the other hand, there is the increasingly crowded and fierce competition for schedules. After mid-March, the box office was less than 20 million yuan for many consecutive working days. Even after the Spring Festival, there have been various types of films with good reputations, including "The Way of the Weird Genius", "There is Tomorrow", "The Fantasy Adventures of Cats", "I'll Be Fine", "Your Voice", etc., but none of them have really aroused the audience's enthusiasm for watching movies. A cruel fact is that throughout March, the top two Spring Festival films "Nezha 2" and "Detective Chinatown 1900" still dominated the list, contributing 70% of the box office in the entire market.
In March, Nezha 2 and Detective Chinatown 1900 accounted for nearly 70% of the box office revenue.
This kind of "grouping" is not healthy, but it is also somewhat helpless. Looking at the box office data of the past few years, the clustering of new films can indeed create a lively scene in the cinema in the short term, making movie-watching behavior a hot spot during the holidays and generating certain topics of communication. High-quality films have more opportunities to stand out at this stage by relying on word-of-mouth fermentation, and then play a word-of-mouth advantage in subsequent daily screenings, achieving a longer screening life cycle.
Unlike the demand for entertainment during long holidays, the films that really gain high box office during non-mainstream periods such as Qingming Festival and Dragon Boat Festival do not just rely on the short three days of the period. Although this year's Qingming Festival period had a bad start in the pre-sale stage, it is still expected to bring audiences back to the cinema with its content.
In addition to several realistic themes, there are also many movies that play to their social attributes and provide a platform for specific audiences to gather with like-minded people. For example, the movie "Breaking Hell", which has already been released, returned to the theaters during the Qingming Festival to launch a "Thanksgiving Special Edition", adding more than 10 minutes of new content to attract audiences who have seen the original film or are interested in this theme to go to the theater. Although the number of screenings of the film is very small and it is only shown in theaters under Emperor Entertainment Group, the average number of people per show is 9.8, which is much higher than other films in the same period; the return of the movie "Hot" starring Wang Yibo has attracted many fans. On social media such as Weibo and Xiaohongshu, the private screening activities of going to the cinema with "colleagues" to "support" their favorite creators are very popular.
"Mobile Suit Gundam: The Battle Across Time" also delighted fans of the two-dimensional world during this Qingming Festival. Gundam fans have produced a wealth of peripheral materials, and various movie-watching groups are ready to go.
Collecting materials is the reason why many young audiences go to the cinema
The "cold" and "hot" of the Qingming Festival are essentially the result of rational market choices: filmmakers fight for niche markets with small and medium-sized costs, and audiences vote with their feet to seek diverse experiences. These liveliness of offline cinemas may not be converted into exciting box office figures like "Nezha 2", but for the audiences who enter the cinema, they gain more diverse emotional experiences compared to traditional movie watching; and for the industry, these figures that are not on the box office charts also send positive signals. Different types of films need to more carefully tap vertical audiences and open up niche markets to truly extend the life cycle of the film.
