Author | Winika Li Chunhui
The most high-profile event in the film industry in 2023 was China's acquisition of Wanda Film. With the completion of the last equity transfer on December 6, 2023, Wanda Film officially changed ownership of Chinese Confucianism. At that time, the name of the latter might be quite unfamiliar to many outsiders. Even for insiders, it was only after the leading promotion of "Hello, Li Huanying" in 2021 that Ruyi became famous and became an upstart in the industry.
At a time when there is a lot of speculation about how Ruyi will operate Wanda Film, Chen Zhixi (Chen Xi), chief executive of Ruyi in China and a leading producer, became chairman of Wanda Film on January 29th. He managed all the business sectors such as film industry, cinema chain, distribution and derivatives, and officially became the new head of Wanda Film. Through real-controlled Hong Kong stock listed company China Ruyi and A-share listed company Wanda Film, China Ruyi Chairman Ke Liming has taken the helm of the film and television aircraft carrier with a market capitalization of nearly 50 billion.
It's hard not to dream back to ten years ago. This is a dream that many people have had and even traveled to Hollywood. Since 2013, with the rapid development of the domestic film market, the Internet, real estate, finance and other external capital entered, head film companies into the capital fast track. Financing, listing, mergers and acquisitions, the rapid rise of star companies, dazzling financial operations, and even going to Hollywood to buy, until the cold winter of film and television in 2018.
Over the past ten years, the opening forum of the Shanghai Film Festival featured the "five" private film companies, from Wanda, Boehner, Light, Huayi, Letv, exit, left behind, thunderstorm. Until today, the "new four" pattern, which is composed of Confucianism, light, cat's eye and Ali, has taken shape again.
This is a decade in which Chinese films dare to dream, pay a huge price for their dreams and leave important achievements. Some people seize the wave of capital, but lose the opportunity of the film; some people create a new paradigm, but lost in the gambling of capital. With the exit of non-professional capital such as the Internet and real estate, professional capital represented by Confucianism is making a comeback. Will it be different this time? Where will the post-80s female goalkeeper lead Wanda film, and how will it change the pattern of Chinese film?
The new official was on fire, Chen Zhixi showed off "moments"Judging from the production information of the Spring Festival film in 2024, there are Confucian figures behind the title film "Article 20", "Flying Life 2", "bear haunting time and space" and "Hot and Hot". Taking a comprehensive look at the number of people, Internet popularity and other data, this year's Spring Festival champion and runner-up are not likely to come out of these.
To win all the investment in the four Spring Festival head films is equivalent to locking in the income ahead of time. To use an early popular saying, it is called "buy the track".
It is worth noting that behind each film invested by Confucianism, Wanda Film has a joint distribution of five continents. This is obviously a luxury meeting gift given by Chen Zhixi to Wanda Film, and it is also the first time to test the upstream and downstream linkage of "Confucianism + Wanda".
It can be expected that after Chen Zhixi takes over, the Wanda film has already made up the operation ability of the upstream end, and will certainly aim to open up the upstream and downstream links, forming the layout of the whole industry chain from content production, investment to cinema lines, and distribution resources.
At present, no one on the market has really run through the film industry chain. In the years when Wanda Movie was still making a lot of money, only "Chinatown investigation" IP was successful. And the original producer of this IP was Chen Zhixi.
Looking at this Spring Festival alone, Chen Chih-hsi's ability to operate at the upstream end is also clear at a glance. Apart from Ruyi, no second company can win the investment share of each company in the highly competitive Spring Festival.
In particular, the light, which rarely releases its share to the outside world, has always liked to control its share and make a fortune, but this year it made an exception and cooperated with Confucianism and Italy for the first time.
Of course, Chen Zhixi and Guang Guang were old friends. In 2012, when Xu Zheng shot "Lost in Thailand," it was Chen Zhixi who led the investment of light. In 2018, Han Yan's work Animal World, invested and produced by Chen Zhixi, is regarded as a pioneering work of domestic film industrialization production, and there is also investment in light.
Chen Zhixi made more than one day's contribution to the layout of the upstream and downstream industrial chain. The leader of domestic animation chase light animation, but also for her first time to break her investment "circle of friends." This year, Juguang announced that he would join hands with Ruyi to produce the third film in the White Snake series, "White Snake: a floating Life," and handed over the control of the announcement to Ruyi.
While families are still hesitant about the Spring Festival, Ruyi has taken the lead in completing the layout of the 2024 summer, announcing that "White Snake: a floating Life" will be the first commercial blockbuster in 2024.
You know, in the summer of 2023, Juguang won the highest box office of 1.8 billion in the history of Changan animation, and became the object of cooperation for capital looting. Ruyi can win the blockbuster new work, which shows its attraction to upstream deep content producers.
Light and light are veteran craftsmen who have been ploughing movies and animation tracks for many years, and they have always shown people with a steady and cautious style. Now they break the convention one after another and take over the olive branch of cooperation between Confucianism and Italy, which fully shows that the industry is optimistic about the combination of "Ruyi + Wanda". Chen Zhixi's Wanda Film may recover the speed of light from the lost five years and reconstruct the relationship and pattern of Chinese films.
Bold and careful, Chen Zhixi's production MethodologyChen Zhixi's series of actions in the new Wanda film come from years of accumulation. In fact, long before she became the content helmsman of Ruyi, she had fully proved her sharpness and ability to manipulate the mainland film market.
Born in 1982, Chen Zhixi graduated from the acting Department of the Central Academy of Drama in 2000 and starred in TV dramas such as "walking out of the Blue River". When he moved to the production field in 2010, he soon became famous in the circle because of "lost in Thailand."
The film can be described as a phenomenal dark horse in the film industry in 1942. The first domestic film in film history grossed more than 1 billion yuan at the box office, boosting 1.27 billion yuan at a cost of less than 30 million. And thus opened another era of comedy films for the Lunar New year (it is not difficult to see the fashion at that time when it was released at the same time as "1942", "the Feast of the King" and "the Fantasy drifting of Pi").
In addition to his brilliant achievements, we can quite see Chen Chixi's attitude towards content from lost in Thailand: paying attention to the unpopular types and new types that were not mainstream in the market at that time, paying attention to new directors, paying attention to small cuts and small potatoes, and being good at being small and big.
After Chen Zhixi joined Confucianism in 2015, he continued to practice this set of content methodology. When Ruyi went public in 2020, it handed over two popular styles-New Year's Day box office champion "send you a Little Red Flower" and Spring Festival box office champion "Hello, Li Huanying".
It can be seen that in terms of content, Chen Zhixi pays more attention to the effect of topic selection and pays more attention to the realistic subject matter. Whether it is the popular style in 2020 or the "enthusiasm" of "keeping you safe" in 2023, it is to pay close attention to social issues and grasp the public mood. In the past three years, when the film market environment was not good, there was a wave of tear gas films, and Ruyi was an important leader.
In fact, Chen Zhixi and Wanda films also have a deep relationship. In 2015, Wanda Film's Wuzhou film distribution reached its peak, with a box office of 6.7 billion yuan, accounting for 1/4 of the domestic film market share that year. Chen Zhixi is responsible for this. Her production of "Chinatown investigation" and "Pancake Man" contributed 30% of the film's box office to the distribution of the five continents with 823 million and 1.16 billion respectively. Since then, Tang Tan IP has also become a cash cow that Wanda films have benefited from for many years.
Reviewing Chen Chih-hsi's past production works, we will find that Chen Chih-hsi has been seen in almost every major period. In 2022, due to the epidemic environment, the market was not as expected, and before the summer vacation approached, Chen Zhixi made a decisive decision to win the movie "Walking the Moon alone" together with Ali Pictures. In the end, "alone Moon" won the summer championship in 2022 with a box office of 3.103 billion.
Chen Zhixi is also an important driver of the new director and film industrialization. Dapeng, whose acting and directing abilities were both recognized in 2023, was first taken into custody by Chen Zhixi. As early as 2015, Chen Zhixi produced Dapeng's first directing film, Pancake Man. In 2017, we cooperated with Dapeng in the name of Ruyi Pictures to produce the Sewing Machine Band.
Even when Dapeng encountered the trough of word-of-mouth, Confucianism still did not give up, just like Chen Zhixi's righteous support to Pan Yueming, which brought him out of the trough of his life. This year's "keep you safe" and "warm" directed by Dapeng have grossed 700 million and 900 million respectively, both of which are controlled by the owners of the Confucian film. Dapeng, who started the online grassroots comedy, finally proved his directing ability to the market, and Chen Zhixi also proved his vision of seeing the director again.
Chen Zhixi's vision of tapping the new director is also reflected in boldly giving the director the opportunity to try new types. In 2018, the owner of Ruyi Film controlled Han Yan's "Animal World". Its scale of mobilizing international resources, film style and audio-visual effect are not new.
Where will the 50 billion yuan market value film and television aircraft carrier go?With Chen Zhixi joining Wanda Film to start the full integration work, the fact in front of us is that China Ruyi, the leading film and television company in the Hong Kong stock market, has officially merged with Wanda, the boss of the private film company in the A-share market, and has become the largest film and television entertainment company in China.
There is not only a strategic capital organization, but also the production ability of popular styles, which makes Ruyi quickly become a dazzling star in the film industry. However, the next step is to become the "giant aircraft carrier" of the whole industry chain film and television, which integrates products, distribution, cinema, streaming media, derivatives and games. How to operate is a major concern from all walks of life. From the point of view of today's head company, owning the Confucian meaning after Wanda's film is almost a new species-Light, Boehner does not have streaming media, Ali and Tencent do not have cinema lines, which is bound to bring new opportunities and challenges.
No matter what the final effect is, at this stage, Ruyi is the best choice for Wanda. For the past few years, Wanda has been surviving with a broken arm. Delisting in September 2016 and another attempt to return to Hong Kong shares in October 2021. From a financial point of view, Wanda has continued to "slim down" over the past five years, selling assets and reducing liabilities.
Although Wanda Film's performance picked up last year, it did not help Wanda to extricate itself from difficulties. And the Wanda film has not handed over a mass masterpiece for a long time since "Chinatown investigation 3" and "manslaughter 2" in 2021.
Chen Zhixi's arrival can at least help Wanda break the game quickly at the upstream end. Judging from the filing information, Confucianism is full of food and food, but only Dongfeng is lacking. The latest film filings released by the State Film Administration show that Ruyi has filed three films in the "Bao Gong case" series, as well as a "Journey to the West" true and fake Monkey King has entered a critical production period.
At the same time, with the outstanding ability of production and distribution, the cinema line of Wanda will be like a tiger, ensuring the distribution efficiency of high-quality works at the downstream end. At the same time, Ruyi can also copy the style of streaming media giants and make great efforts in the fields of derivatives and games. The cinema resources of Confucian streaming media and Wanda movies have formed an imaginative flow pool, with online and offline traffic entrances readily available.
And this kind of service ability of the whole industry chain is bound to form a great attraction to the creators of the film and television circle, further enhance the content moat of Confucianism and increase the probability of popular style.
In any case, this dreamy story of "Wall Street + Hollywood" a decade ago means that the industry has been reinjected with money and confidence. With the topic effect of "Fengshen" and the Chinese Confucian Journey to the West and the series of Bao Gong, there may be a new wave of visual effects and the popularity of Chinese stories, which is what hard Sugar is looking forward to every day.
After a decade of rapid growth and bubble setbacks, whether the last golden age that seemed within reach and passed by reappeared in a different way.
