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The film market, which has been sluggish for nearly half a year, is in urgent need of a film with box office appeal. "'Catching Dolls' is our biggest hope for this summer." Some theater managers see "Catching Dolls" as a film that will save the market.

Author | He Jing (Beijing)

"Don't talk about the meaning, don't think too much, just because it's funny it deserves five stars." This is the most popular comment on the Douban short review list of the comedy movie "Catching Dolls". But many people also think that "the plot is very uncomfortable, and almost all the jokes are based on deceiving children."

The polarization of word-of-mouth does not affect the rising box office. The comedy movie "Catching Dolls" starring Shen Teng and Ma Li has grossed more than 1.6 billion yuan in seven days since its release, becoming the highest-grossing movie after this year's Spring Festival.

Compared with previous summer seasons, the dark horse "Catching Dolls" is late. This year's film market continues to be sluggish, and the total box office rankings are still less than half of last year. The summer season is already halfway through, and only two movies have exceeded the box office of 1 billion, with a total box office of 6 billion. In the top 10 box office last year, the summer season occupied five seats, contributing 14 billion in box office.

"Catch the Dolls is our biggest hope for this summer." A cinema manager sees "Catch the Dolls" as a movie to save the market. This year's film market has been cold, and the summer season is not optimistic.

"We planned to acquire a number of cinemas last year, but the summer season was extremely hot at the time and many cinemas significantly raised their prices. They probably thought that the film market would pick up starting last year, but in the first half of this year, prices dropped again," revealed a person from a listed film and television company.

This year, the film market has not produced any blockbuster movies since the Spring Festival. "In previous years, good movies started to be released in June, but this year, it started to get hot after the release of "Catching Dolls" in mid-July." Cinema manager Li Shuang said that the film market has not had any good movies for a long time.

A very important reason is that the inventory of movies from the past few years of the epidemic was basically released last year and the first half of this year. The industry has just begun to recover and production capacity is seriously insufficient.

Before the suspense film "The Silent Killer" was released, many theaters regarded this film as the first dark horse of the summer season. Last year, the box office of the same type of film "Her" reached 3.5 billion.

However, after its release in early July, "The Murderer" started strong but ended weakly, with the box office exceeding 100 million yuan in a single day only on its first weekend. Its cumulative box office revenue has reached 1.1 billion yuan to date. "Although the box office revenue is not bad, the effect is not as good as expected, and it still failed to boost the market," said Xiao Chen, the cinema manager.

The film industry has the concept of "summer season" and "Spring Festival season" because this period is a period of explosive movie watching, with a batch of movies released at the same time, attracting audiences to the cinema and boosting the film market. However, the overall market has been cold this year, and there has not been a hit since the Spring Festival.

"Withdrawal" has almost become a keyword for the film industry in 2024. This year, more than 10 films have been withdrawn from the Spring Festival, May Day, and summer vacation. The film "Let's Rock the Sun Together", which was originally scheduled to be released during the Spring Festival, was temporarily withdrawn and rescheduled to Qingming Festival. The final box office was 270 million yuan. The May Day film "Nothing Can't Be Solved by a Hot Pot" was withdrawn and then broadcast online. In early July, the movie "Wild Child" was withdrawn on the day it was promoted, and the new version of the movie "Dream of Red Mansions: Golden Jade Marriage" was also announced on the 20th to be postponed.

One distributor said, "Generally, the reasons for withdrawing films include censorship issues and the consideration of avoiding blockbusters, but many of the films that were temporarily withdrawn this year were due to a lack of confidence in the overall market."

The market, which has been sluggish for nearly half a year, is in urgent need of a film with box office appeal. "At the beginning, we did not spend a lot of effort on the promotion of "Catching Dolls." Xiao Chen introduced, "Usually, before a movie is released, it will be shown to theaters first, and we will schedule the screenings based on the quality of the movie, but there is no screening for "Catching Dolls", so we are not sure about the quality. But seeing that Shen Teng and Ma Li are the leading actors, and it is a work of Happy Twist, I feel that the quality should be guaranteed."

On July 13, "Catching Dolls" officially began to be screened. A group of theater managers, including Xiao Chen and Li Shuang, decided to increase the number of screenings as soon as they saw the film. Maoyan data showed that on the 13th, the screening share of "Catching Dolls" reached 29.7%, and it continued to rise, reaching a peak of 43.1% at one point, and the box office share reached 60%-70%.

As a comedy, "Catching Dolls" is almost guaranteed to be funny with the team of Happy Twist + Shen Teng, Ma Li, + Yan Fei, and Peng Damo. Directors Yan Fei and Peng Damo previously directed "The Richest Man in Xihong City" and "The Killer Is Not So Calm", which grossed over 5 billion yuan. Maoyan Professional Edition shows that the box office forecast for "Catching Dolls" has exceeded 3.7 billion yuan.

"We are all too tired, we don't want to be profound, just laugh." This is almost the reason why most people give "Catch the Doll" a high score. For most moviegoers, watching movies is a leisure and entertainment thing, an outlet for emotions, and comedy can allow people to temporarily escape from the pressure of reality.

Hilarious is also the most common comment about "Catching Dolls". The topic of Chinese education is empathetic, the setting of rich people pretending to be poor, the dramatic conflicts under this identity, and the tacit understanding between Shen Teng and Ma Li all make the comedy tension of this movie full. Han Han even gave the comment that "Catching Dolls is the funniest movie ever".

However, this topic is too close to reality, which makes it easier for the audience to identify with the film. Some people commented that "Catching Dolls" is "a horror film in the guise of a comedy." In the low-scoring reviews on Douban, the audience felt that the ubiquitous surveillance is very similar to the kind of parents who have a strong desire for control under Chinese education; the first reaction of the children when they gave up the college entrance examination was that it was a pity that they had to repeat the year; the jokes were all based on deceiving the children, which is the sadness of East Asian children.

Compared with previous Douban reviews, where the audience evaluated the story structure, narrative logic, and dramatic conflict, the reviews for "Catch the Dolls" are more about the audience's evaluation based on emotions and experiences after watching the movie.

On July 17, a Toutiao account authenticated as "Lu Chuan" said, "Mahua's low-quality, highly alkaline comedy films dominate the Chinese film market, which is a cultural tragedy."

To a certain extent, this also reflects the changing needs of the audience for movies. Compared with the content quality, they care more about the emotional value brought by the movie. Theater managers also share this trend. "Everyone watches movies for relaxation and entertainment. Now the audience's tastes prefer family comedies like "Catch the Dolls", stress-relieving movies like "All or Nothing" and "Gone Girl", and inspirational movies like "In the Octagonal Cage", said theater manager Li Chen.

Movies with heavy emotional content have performed well at the box office in recent years. This trend has also directly affected the theater's screening schedule. "Only by gaining the favor of the sinking market can a movie have the possibility of earning more than 1 billion yuan at the box office." Li Chen said that they will also prefer such movies when scheduling screenings.

For practitioners, the release of "Catch the Doll" has undoubtedly boosted morale and boosted the popularity of the entire summer season. "The Silent Killer" released in early July and "Falling into the Mortal Realm" released on the 11th both reversed their box office declines after the release of "Catch the Doll". The upcoming "Decryption" and "Safe Escape from the 21st Century" have both received good reviews for previews.

In addition, a new change this year is that in previous years, there would be a protection period for domestic films during the popular movie schedules, but the Marvel IP "Deadpool and Wolverine" has joined this year's summer schedule and is scheduled to be released on July 26, at the same time as North America.

"After the release of 'Catch the Dolls', we can clearly see an increase in the number of people visiting cinemas. After the next wave of films are released at the end of July, there is still hope for the summer season," said Li Shuang.