" Breaking Out of the Earth " failed to open up a new situation for domestic animated movies. China's mythology still needs to be told.
In a silent and breathless manner, the animated film "Out of the Earth" produced by Caitouwu has dropped to less than 1 million in a single day, and the box office decline is fully demonstrated. This movie that was once highly anticipated, not to mention creating the box office miracle of " Nezha: The Devil Child Comes into the World ", it seems that it is probably difficult to even make a profit.
Before it was released, relevant institutions showed a cautious attitude towards the box office predictions of "Out of the Earth". The box office forecast on the first day was only 3.842 million, and the final box office remained at 20.202 million. However, "Out of the Earth" actually only achieved a first-day box office of 2.789 million, a million lower than expected. At present, Maoyan has lowered the total box office forecast of "Breaking Out of the Earth" to 15.15 million.
Source: Maoyan
If "Out of the Earth" is just an ordinary movie, it may not be worth being surprised by it. However, as the producer, Caitiaowu is the leading animation film distribution company in China. It has successively released many well-known animations such as " Big Fish and Begonia " and " Big Guardian ". "Nezha: The Devil Child Comes into the World" released in 2019 has even created a box office miracle of 5.035 billion. Moreover, "Out of the Earth" is adapted from the well-known domestic animation "Star Travels", which comes with a bonus of emotion. In addition, there were no other animated films competing with them in the same period, and the box office performance should not be so sluggish.
Due to the impact of the epidemic, this year's summer vacation has become a bit duller than in previous years. As of July 19, the box office of the 2022 summer season exceeded 3.769 billion, and it still cannot reach the level of last year's summer season. Objectively speaking, the cold market of the movie is one of the reasons why many films perform less than expected in box office, and the same is true for "Out of the Earth".
Source: Maoyan
But the impact of the epidemic is by no means the main reason why "Rare Out of the Earth" performs so poorly. Among the films released in the same period, " Detectives vs. " has achieved a box office of 431 million in 12 days of release; "The Great Events in Life" has accumulated a box office of more than 1.445 billion in 26 days; and " Mozart in Outer Space", which was released one day earlier than "Out of Earth", has also exceeded 130 million in box office. Although the movie market is cold, the daily box office remains around 100 million.
In comparison, the box office performance of "Out of the Earth" can no longer be described as dismal.
On the Weibo square of "Breaking Out of the Earth", people comment on movies from time to time. What is a little embarrassing is that Zhoushen fans account for a considerable proportion, and their evaluation of the movie is relatively mild. Zhou Shen sang the theme song of "Storm Out of the Earth". Fans often spontaneously promote the movie for the purpose of supporting their idols. Apart from Zhou Shen’s fans, not many netizens discussing this movie, and the popularity of the Internet is visible to the naked eye.
is on Douban, "Breaking Out of the Earth" has not yet been opened, and netizens have mixed reviews. As a movie adapted from "Travels of the Stars", fans of the original work generally have low evaluations of "Out of the Earth". However, there are only more than 80 discussion posts in the entire community, and the popularity is also not high.
And in "Star Travels" Baidu Tieba , "Out of the Earth" is suffering the most violent criticism. Even optimistic bar friends predict that the final box office of "Out of the Earth" will not be higher than 20 million, while pessimists believe that this movie will die. Similar to Douban, the main point of complaints among bar friends is that the plot of "Breaking Out of the Earth" has lost the essence of the original work "Travels of Stars", which can be called "destroying childhood."
If "Out of the Earth" is included, four works have been born in the "Star Travels" series. The TV animation launched in 2011 has a rating of up to 9.6, and is known as the pinnacle of domestic boy animation. The online movies launched in 2017 and 2020 have been criticized by the audience, and their ratings have continued to decline. Although "Out of the Earth" has not yet been scored, judging from the current situation, its final score is not optimistic.
No matter what, such a result is not what Caitiaowu wants to see.
In fact, "Out of the Earth" has undergone a withdrawal, and the original schedule for this movie was July 30, 2021. However, in the summer season of 2021, the animated movies have the popular IP "White Snake 2: The Green Snake Calamity", and coupled with the squeeze of blockbusters such as " Chinese Doctor " and " Anger·Serious Case ", "Breaking Out of the Earth" finally had to choose to escape.
Although the production cost of "Out of the Earth" is not high, and the outside world is rumored to be around 10 million, it is a work that took six years to carefully polish. It was previously reported that there were more than 120,000 manuscripts in "Out of the Earth" and were made purely by hand. As a Chinese-style science fiction animation, the difficulty and project volume of hand-drawn have increased. Up to now, the special effects and character and scene design of "Out of the Earth" have not been widely criticized. Because of this, the outside world once hoped that this movie could create another miracle and open up new areas of domestic animated films.
For Caitou House, it is also very important to break free from the constraints of the "Shenxian Universe" and open up a new track. Judging from the results, "Out of the Earth" avoiding the 2021 summer schedule is a wise choice. But unfortunately, even in the unique summer season of 2022, "Breaking Out of the Earth" still failed to bring miracles.
The painting quality of "Out of the Earth" is remarkable and interesting.
There is no doubt that the work that gives the aura of Colorful House is "Nezha: The Devil Child Comes into the World". Before this movie, although Caitouya had produced many animated films such as "Big Fish and Begonia" and "Big Protection", the market performance was not ideal, and the box office and reputation were not as expected.
, the 2D animated film "Big Fish and Begonia" released in 2016, had a Douban score of only 69, and its final box office was 565 million. The large number of Chinese classical cultural elements that appear in the movie once illuminated the audience. However, the poor narrative rhythm and character portrayal have lowered the overall quality of the film.
Photo source: Douban
The 2D animated film "The Great Guardian" released a year later has received no more attention than "Big Fish and Begonia". The number of people who evaluated "Big Fish and Begonia" was as high as 520,000, while the number of people who protected the Great Law was reduced to 340,000. The popularity of the movie is reflected in the box office. "The Great Guardian" finally only won 87.613 million yuan, which is slightly dismal. Compared with "The Great Protector", " Yesterday Qingkong " released in 2018 has a Douban score of only 6.1, and "Mr. Miao" released in 2020 has a Douban score of only 6.2, and it can't even maintain its reputation.
Image source: Douban
It has to be said that "Nezha: The Devil Child Comes into the World" which emerged in 2019 changed the fate of Caitiao House. To this day, "Nezha: The Devil Child Comes into the World" is still the one with the highest Douban rating among the animated films produced by Caitouya. At the same time, it is also the movie with the highest box office in Caitou House. From then on, the Colorful House was given a layer of mythological color. At the same time, under the Chinese mythological system, Chinese animated films ushered in a new wave of blowouts.
Source: Douban
"Nezha: The Devil Child Comes into the World" opens the "mythical trilogy" of Caitou House, which is the "Shenshi Universe" that movie fans are talking about. In 2020, the second " Jiang Ziya " of the "Mythical Trilogy" was released, with great influence from the previous "Nezha: The Devil Child Comes into the World", and the outside world's expectations for "Jiang Ziya" are particularly high. However, the actual performance of "Jiang Ziya" disappointed the fans. "Jiang Ziya" finally received a box office of 1.602 billion, which has ranked second in the box office of animated films in mainland China, second only to "Nezha: The Devil Child Comes into the World". But compared with the 5.035 billion yuan of "Nezha: The Devil Child Comes into the World", "Jiang Ziya" has already made Caitouya "fall from the altar".
If you analyze the box office trend of "Jiang Ziya", you will find that "Jiang Ziya" has reached a box office of 1.036 billion four days before its release, which is in line with the public's expectations for "Jiang Ziya".However, as word of mouth fermented, the rating of "Jiang Ziya" on Douban fell from 7.5 and eventually fell below 6 points, with a reputation overturned. The single-day box office of "Jiang Ziya" eventually fell by less than 5 million.
Source: Douban
To be fair, although "Jiang Ziya" performed less than expected and the plot has been widely criticized, the reason why the public opinion of this movie is inseparable from the promotion and promotion of the mountain Caitiaowu. Before "Jiang Ziya" was released, the official had been continuously strengthening the connection between "Jiang Ziya" and "Nezha: The Devil Child Comes into the World" and conducting a lot of bundled publicity, and the appetite of movie fans was repeatedly raised. During the release of the movie, this "dream linkage" still exists, and even radiates from the second dimension to the third dimension. In the end, when "Jiang Ziya"'s performance was not as expected, how could the public's counterattack not be fierce?
The excessive binding between "Jiang Ziya" and "Nezha: The Devil Child Comes into the World" has also caused some characters to be separated from each other - the most representative one is Shen Gongbao. Shen Gongbao in "Nezha: The Devil Child Comes into the World" is a scheming villain, but in "Jiang Ziya", he becomes a strong man with rough image and simple thoughts.
As the producer's Colorful House, it did not show a clear "Shenxian Universe" like the public, which led many people to naturally believe that "Jiang Ziya" is the sequel to "Nezha: The Devil Child Comes into the World". Since these two movies are based on the mythological stories of "The Investiture of the Gods", there are many overlaps between the characters and backgrounds, the resulting confusion of character design is inevitable. But in fact, these two works are equivalent to parallel universes and have no deep connection with each other. If this situation continues for a long time, Caitouya's desire to build a "Chinese mythological universe" may be very difficult. What's worse is that this kind of conflict in character is spreading in the domestic animation and film circle.
After "Nezha: The Devil Child Comes into the World" became popular, ancient Chinese myths have become the key theme for many animation companies to follow, and animation movies have entered the era of "gods and immortals" fighting. These works are concentrated in the two mythological systems of "Journey to the West" and "The Investiture of the Gods". "New God List: Nezha Rebirth" released in 2021 also focused on the character Nezha. The unique setting of the story is time travel, making Nezha very different from the traditional image. But after "Nezha: The Devil Child Comes into the World", any works of similar themes will inevitably be compared, and even movies produced by Caiwuya cannot be avoided. The comparison results are often more tragic. So much so that people began to joke that the animated movies after "Nezha" are all like "Nezha", but none of them can surpass "Nezha".
Source: Douban
After Nezha, the animated movie with Yang Jian as the protagonist is about to usher in a blowout. "New God List: Yang Jian", " Erlang Shen: Deep Sea Dragon ", " Erlang Biography ", "Yang Jian", and Caitouwu's "Yang Jian Chapter" will be on the big screen one after another.
classic mythological IP is over-concentrated, which inevitably causes the audience's aesthetic fatigue, and this situation becomes more and more obvious after "Nezha: The Devil Child Comes into the World". Especially the quality of these works is uneven, making it even more difficult to get the audience's recognition. After "animated movies are all like "Nezha", the era of "animated movies are all like "Yang Jian"" may be coming.
But in this "hunting" against Yang Jian, Caitou House seemed to be a little behind.
According to public information, "New God List: Yang Jian" from light-chasing animation is expected to be released in July, and "Yang Jian" from Caitouwu has not yet entered the promotional stage since its exposure in 2019. Moreover, ancient Chinese myths belong to public copyrights, not unique to colored houses. Since the IP value of "The Investiture of the Gods" has been fully proved by the market, only more and more entrants will join this hunt. It can be imagined that even after Yang Jian, this phenomenon will not disappear.
Although , chairman of Light Media, the parent company of Color Tiaowu, Wang Changtian , had previously stated that it will launch 2 to 3 Chinese mythological universe series movies in a year in the future, it is obvious that Light Media has made much more preparations than that. "Out of the Earth" released this year is seen as a signal of change in the Colorful House - if the Chinese style science fiction that is separated from mythology can be achieved, then there will be a brand new blue ocean in front of you. But unfortunately, the result was not satisfactory. "Out of the Earth" took six years to polish it, and its box office performance today is far from meeting the expectations of the outside world.
Of course, for Colorful House, there is still room for trial and error. Even the box office performance of "Nezha: The Devil Child Comes into the World" and "Jiang Ziya", the two movies started almost at the same time, with a production cycle of 3 years. At the beginning of the project, the two films had already established their own different artistic styles and plot tones, and everything was waiting for the market to test. If you come from the perspective of the creator, Caitouya gives the creator full freedom of artistic expression. But the result is inevitably full of bitterness.
From this point of view, there are some accidental factors in the popularity of "Nezha: The Devil Child Comes into the World" and the lottery house was right. The lack of expectations in "Jiang Ziya" and the coldest encounter in "Raidering Out of the Earth" are also fair judgments made by the market.
In the face of cruel reality, "My life is in my mind, not in my mind" is more of a slogan. When will the next "Nezha: The Devil Child Comes into the World" appear? Perhaps, Caitouya himself doesn't know the answer to this question. Before "rushing out of the earth", staying in the "Shenxian Universe" is the key to breaking the deadlock.
Even though the public has gradually become tired of the mythical subjects, today's Colorful House can only face difficulties.
