Disney is higher than the total box office of China film market. How to evaluate global films in 2019？
Behind the continued slight increase in the world is the "emergence" of solidified contradictions.
Text/July
Over $41.3 billion, a year-on-year increase of 1%.
This is the answer sheet handed over by the global film market in 2019. From the year-on-year growth rate of about 3% in 2016 and 2017 to a slight increase of only 1% in 2018, the slight increase in the global film market has steadily increased.
However, the box office in the North American market once again experienced a small decline, which was less than the $11.4 billion in 2016. Fortunately, the international market still maintained a certain degree of growth, and finally succeeded in pulling the whole global film market to continue to increase slightly.
What is worthy of recognition is that Disney still shows a strong growth trend under such a slight increase background, and its global achievements have exceeded $11 billion in one fell swoop, achieving a qualitative leap.
From this point of view, Disney does not seem to have been too impacted by streaming media. But in fact, the competition between traditional cinemas and streaming media platforms such as Netflix has become a global trend. Although Hollywood giants began to increase their layout on streaming media, the difficulty of solidification of their creation seems to have just begun.
one
Continue to increase slightly
Global environment.
The film market in North America tends to be saturated, which has basically become a well-known information. Therefore, in 2019, the box office in North America fell to $11.36 billion, down 4.4% compared with 2018. This phenomenon does not seem to cause more surprises.
Looking back at the box office performance in recent years, the box office performance in North America has basically shown a relatively stable interval value, which has been fluctuating up and down within the range of 11-12 billion US dollars. Among them, the highest record was $11.88 billion in 2018.
Similar to the relatively stable film market in North America, the international market and the global market in 2019 also showed a slight increase trend: in 2019, the box office in the international market exceeded 30 billion US dollars, an increase of 2.7%; The growth of the global box office is more "cautious", achieving an increase of 200 million US dollars compared with 2018, reaching 41.3 billion US dollars, maintaining a slight increase of 1%.
On the basis of the relatively stable box office in North America, let’s look at the box office performance in the international market and the global market in recent years. In fact, the slight increase has already become a major trend in the entire film market.
From 2015 to 2019, except for a slight decline in 2016, the box office market in the international market was basically in a relatively stable and small growth process, and reached a new volume of 30 billion US dollars in 2019.
Under the dual influence of the box office in North America and the "small step" of the box office in the international market, the growth rate of the global market has slowed down, from about 3% in the previous two years to 1% in 2019.
It is worth noting that although it has become an inevitable trend to continue to increase slightly, the slight increase of 1% in the global box office is not a good signal for the film industry. In particular, half of the audience has stepped on the turning point of "negative growth".
The reason is that the traditional movie consumption pattern is being impacted by the new consumption and entertainment pattern on a global scale. For example, social networks and short videos in the domestic market have greatly diverted young audiences, and the North American market and most international markets have been greatly impacted by streaming media. This situation is an almost irreversible global trend in a short time.
At the same time, the new consumption and entertainment model is actually in the process of updating and iteration. The future development of the global cinema market will face the difficulty of being greatly diverted from the audience for a long time, and the state of slight increase will only get longer and longer.
2
Disney’s "Outbreak"
IP value power.
Different from the overall film market environment, Disney, which officially completed the acquisition of Fox, seems to show a stronger growth posture.
Disney still sits firmly in the first place among Hollywood producers and distributors in 2019: its global box office exceeded $11 billion, an increase of more than 50% compared with $7.33 billion in 2018; And far exceeded the highest record of $7.61 billion in 2016.
At the same time, Disney’s box office performance in the North American market in 2019 also made a great breakthrough, once again refreshing the historical record of 3.09 billion US dollars in 2018 with 3.8 billion US dollars; And the market share exceeded 30% for the first time, reaching 33.45%.
It is worth noting that Disney achieved good results in 2019, but this did not count the box office data of the acquired Fox.
It can be seen that the "Big Five" in Hollywood, which has completed its internal restructuring, has gradually shown a step-by-step industrial pattern, and there is a clear boundary between the first and second echelons: the difference between Disney, which ranks first, and the second echelon in global box office performance is getting bigger and bigger, reaching nearly 7 billion US dollars in 2019.
Looking back at Disney’s transcripts in 2019, among the TOP20 films at the global box office, Disney monopolized 8 of them and became the biggest winner. Among them, the top three are all Disney’s works.
However, it is not difficult to find that 2019 can be said to be a year of Disney’s big IP collection, which is an important reason why Disney can achieve a "qualitative leap" in box office performance: whether it is Avengers 4 and Frozen II in the top three, or Star Wars 9 ranked later, they are all IP series films with successful predecessors; The Lion King, Aladdin and other four films adapted from fairy tales are also largely based on fairy tale IP with a large mass base.
In addition, although most of the films that Disney introduced into the domestic market in 2019 were not satisfactory, they did not actually affect the overall growth trend of Disney. In particular, Disney achieved a global box office growth of $7 billion to $11 billion in 2019.
Obviously, the IP that Disney has been building over the years has successfully formed a stable IP value, which can feed back the company to achieve a global box office increase of more than 50% in the general environment of slight increase. This is also the great reason why Disney is gradually widening the distance with other traditional Hollywood film and television companies.
three
Traditional cinemas tend to solidify.
Single issue option.
In fact, whether we discuss the performance of the global cinema film market or pay attention to the strategic layout of Disney, we can’t avoid the "natural enemy war" between traditional cinema and streaming media. In particular, the streaming media represented by Netflix is not only centered on North America, but also has more active layout investment in the entire overseas market.
It can be found that with Netflix and others gradually gaining achievements in overseas markets, the impact of streaming media on traditional cinema business is constantly strengthening, and the competition between traditional cinema and streaming media has evolved into a global trend, which is no longer limited to a single region.
Therefore, Hollywood giants such as Disney have begun to actively deploy on streaming media to fight back. However, because one of the greatest values of the streaming media platform is to meet the audience’s demand for the convenience of watching movies, it seems that the entry of Hollywood giants into the streaming media war only strengthens the fierce competition between streaming media, but actually can’t change the situation that the traditional cinema business is constantly being impacted.
Specifically, as big producers and distributors, Hollywood giants such as Disney and Warner Bros. will give priority to putting their own "exclusive IP" content on their own streaming media platforms, and use more mass-based IP to compete with the homemade content of streaming media platforms such as Netflix.
This operation just makes smaller independent films and art films gradually lose their status in Hollywood, and they can only commit themselves to small film production companies or choose to invest in streaming media platforms. In particular, some first-line directors and actors who focus on traditional feature films.
The streaming media platform wants to meet its own development needs through the promotion of self-made content, and naturally it will give support to content creators through extremely high cost or even a complete "premium", which is why streaming media platforms such as Netflix have gradually emerged in traditional international film festivals in recent years.
Therefore, compared with the streaming media platform, it began to be competitive in content innovation, but the distribution and creation of the entire traditional industrial system in Hollywood unconsciously fell into a solidification, and the innovation began to decline because of the rigid creation of IP content such as super-English blockbusters. However, it seems that this development trend cannot be reversed in a short time, which is not optimistic.
From now on, the whole movie market will continue to increase slightly for a long time. Although Disney’s IP value is enough to feed back the company, "solidification contradiction" has begun to become a new anxiety for Hollywood movies that have been hit by streaming media.
Therefore, in the future, the stagnant market trend will not change much, and the development space of creativity of traditional cinemas led by Hollywood will become a more difficult problem for the whole film market.