At present, novel coronavirus infection is being fought by the whole nation. The film industry is undoubtedly a disaster area of the epidemic, especially the traditional films in cinemas, which was almost completely destroyed. Since the end of January, seven important films originally scheduled for the Spring Festival holiday have been withdrawn, cinemas across the country have been closed, and all production groups have stopped filming. Originally it is the most important Spring Festival schedule in a year, which has now become the first large schedule of zero ticket real estate since the box office statistics are available. For the film industry, which is in the stage of pressure, the loss is self-evident.
Under the great events, great changes are bound to breed. As the major films were announced to be withdrawn one after another, Huanxi media, one of the main producers of "Lost in Russia", one of the seed players, announced that the film had reached an agreement with Beijing ByteDance Network Technology Co., Ltd., the parent company of Jin Ri Tou Tiao, which invested 630 million yuan to obtain the exclusive broadcast right of the film on its main video platform. From the beginning of the year, all audiences could watch from these channels for free.
One stone arouses thousands of waves, and the ticket skipping incident of "Lost in Russia" immediately causes widespread controversy. One of the supporters believes that in the special circumstances of the sudden outbreak of the epidemic, such an approach can enable the audience to see the new year's blockbuster free of charge without leaving the home, especially for the ordinary Internet users isolated at home, which can not only delight the body and mind, but also help reduce going out and fight the epidemic at home. From the industrial level, it has undoubtedly pioneered the online Premiere of cinema blockbusters, become an important initiator of the transformation of the film industry, and one of the pioneers of the film industry's broadcast mode.
The one who blames appears more in the film industry. As we all know, since the appearance of online movie viewing, the game with traditional cinema line viewing has never stopped. Regardless of either Netflix from the US or Youku, Aiqiyi, and Tencent from China, in addition to customized exclusive broadcast films, most of the cinema-line movies are released on the cinema-line after a month to begin to log in to the online broadcast channel.
In the short term, the most direct beneficiary of online screening is the broad audience. After all, you can see the newly released "blockbuster" for free without going out. The film producer has recovered the investment in advance and realized certain benefits, which is also the beneficiary naturally. The ByteDance invested 630 million yuan, but harvested tens of millions of traffic and downloads, and took this opportunity to expand a large number of new users, won market share, but also made a "cost-effective" deal.
But in the context of increasing emphasis on intellectual property rights, can the audience's "free lunch" be sustained? Can the ‘boss’, who pays for the audience, persist? Can the "Lost in Russia" model become a normal business model? Especially for the more than 10,000 movie theaters and hundreds of thousands of cinema practitioners who are struggling at present, how to get through the difficult period of snow? Looking at the entire 100 billion yuan scale of the film industry, how can we save ourselves after the epidemic? These will be urgent problems to be solved at the whole industry level, which need to be considered and faced by the competent authorities and all practitioners together.
