Text | Node Finance, Author | Sansheng
The box office of the Spring Festival exceeded 10 billion in 7 days. It has not been seen in several years since the Spring Festival period was so popular. On the fourth day of the Lunar New Year, the IMAX episodes of “Nezha 2: The Devil’s Child’s Sea” which was not in prime time were already sold out, and the audience was waiting to enter the venue.
An old lady in her 70s also told Node Finance on the phone, “It’s so beautiful, you must go and have a look.”
The scene where tickets are hard to come by is not limited to Beijing, but the national film market, and the box office record is a foregone conclusion. According to data from the Lighthouse Platform, as of 18:00 on February 5, the box office of the entire Spring Festival exceeded 10.3 billion yuan, of which the cumulative box office of “Nezha 2” has exceeded 5.4 billion yuan, and the total box office of the film is predicted to increase to 8.5 billion yuan. Maoyan platform AI predicts that the total box office of the film in mainland China is expected to reach 8.738 billion yuan, significantly breaking the box office record of domestic films.
Moreover, this hot situation is still continuing. Among them, “Nezha: The Devil Child’s Trouble”, “Detective Tang 1900” and “The Second Part of the Gods: War of Xiqi” ranked among the top three in the box office list of the Spring Festival, becoming the main force leading the popularity of this year’s Spring Festival.
The Spring Festival has always been the “golden time” of the film market. From the perspective of its own feelings, the charm of the Spring Festival movies lies not only in entertainment, but also in the role of emotional bonds, which is very consistent with the atmosphere of the New Year.Behind this movie box office feast is the comprehensive competition between content, market and capital.What are the deeper market and economic signals behind the record-breaking box office growth? This is a problem worth further exploration by Node Finance.
01 Tens of billions of “Spring Festival” and “Nezha 2” leads the way
From a practical viewing experience, the first thing that can be popular during this year’s Spring Festival is the excellent work, among which “Nezha 2” is the most typical, becoming a hit product.
“This special effect is really at the ceiling level.” This is a comment that Node Finance heard in the theater. And on the Internet, there are more similar praises, such as “It’s ignited! The graphics and special effects are great.” “It’s beyond expectations and is better than the first one.” “Taiyi Live’s dubbing is so funny, I’m ready to refresh it. ”.
Some netizens posted on social media that some local theaters were still crowded with viewers preparing to watch “Nezha 2”, and even the show ended at nearly 3 a.m. is still full.Some netizens even posted that a local theater scheduled 99 episodes of “Nezha: The Devil Child’s Trouble” in a day.
With a huge popularity, “Nezha 2” continues to strengthen, setting 17 film history records. On the 4th, its single-day box office exceeded 865 million yuan, and if there is no accident, its box office will continue to rise. According to the box office data predicted by Lighthouse Professional Edition, the latest forecast of “Nezha 2” is 8.5 billion yuan, which is expected to significantly exceed “Changjin Lake” by 5.775 billion yuan, becoming the first film in film history to have a box office of over 6 billion yuan.
At present, the entire Spring Festival period, to summarize the pattern is “one super, many strong ones”. “Nezha 2” is the leader, “Detective Tang 1900” also performed well, and other films are far behind.In the past few years, the film market was weak, and many people attributed the reason to the lack of consumer power among residents. Now, the bigger reason may be the lack of high-quality content.
In the view of Node Finance, the outbreak of this year’s Spring Festival has two distinct characteristics.One is that genre films and classic IPs are popular and become the box office password.Whether it is “Nezha 2”, “Detective Tang 1900”, “The Gods 2” or even “The Legend of the Condor Heroes”, they are all classic IPs, covering topics and creation types such as martial arts, myths, suspense, action, animation, etc. .
Among them, the success of “Nezha 2” lies in the perfect acceptance of “Nezha 1: The Devil Child Comes into the World” in 2019. At that time, “Nezha 1” became the benchmark for animated films in Chinese film history with a box office of 5 billion yuan, laying a solid audience base for “Nezha 2″‘s current popularity. Compared with “Nezha 2”, the performance of “Detective Chinatown 1900” and “The Investiture of the Gods 2” is somewhat inferior.
Therefore, in the view of Node Finance, the movie IP is not necessarily a box office guarantee. Audiences will also experience aesthetic fatigue with classic IPs. For example, although “Detective Chinatown 1900” performed well in the box office, its reputation and rating are far lower than the previous work. The reputation of “The Investiture of the Gods 2” is even more polarized. The special effects styling after Yin Jiao’s transformation has also caused group ridicule online, reducing the work a lot.
In addition to the explosion of classic IP, another prominent feature of the 2025 Spring Festival is the rise of the sinking market.For example, the box office growth rate in provinces such as Shandong, Hebei, and Liaoning has been obvious, and the demand for movie viewing in third- and fourth-tier cities has exploded. Behind this phenomenon is the ticket subsidy policy and the promotion of low-priced tickets.
According to Node Finance, during the Spring Festival, many cities across the country introduced film consumption subsidy policies. Beijing has invested 33 million yuan to issue movie-watching coupons, and Guangdong, Jiangsu and other places have also introduced similar preferential measures. The rise of the sinking market can not only contribute box office to the Spring Festival, but also provide new growth points for the future development of the Chinese film market.
So, what impact will this box office “carnival” of the Spring Festival period have on the film and television industry?
02 The market is recovering, and Chinese films are out of decline?
In fact, from the development of the entire film and television industry, the situation of films has been a bit embarrassing in the past year, because the most discussed films in the industry are not films, but short dramas. According to the “White Paper on the Development of China Micro Short Drama Industry (2024)”, the market size of China’s micro short dramas will exceed 50 billion yuan last year, an increase of about 35% year-on-year, which has exceeded the box office of mainland movies.
This situation occurs. Node Finance believes that on the one hand, this is because the new form of short drama is indeed attractive to the audience, and on the other hand, the film industry itself is “not good at it”. There are too few high-quality videos, which makes it difficult to attract audiences to enter. Cinema.
Before this year’s Spring Festival, there has been no movie in the mainland film market with a box office of more than 5 billion yuan in the past three years.By 2024, the film market further shrank, and the annual box office of movies decreased by 12.45 billion yuan compared with 2023.
The reason why the film market is in decline is that in addition to the few high-quality films, it is also inseparable from the changes in the audience’s viewing habits and the changes in the overall consumption environment. Node Finance also has a personal experience of this. In the past, I could watch several movies every year, but in recent years I have only been to the cinema for a few times.
In the words of a friend around you,“If you can spend money or not, you won’t spend it. If you can watch or not, you won’t watch movies. In the past, you will watch three movies in one year, but now it’s good to watch one movie in three years.”
Therefore, from the overall development of the film industry, confidence is urgently needed, and the popularity of the Spring Festival in 2025 is undoubtedly a good start. In fact, from the overall development of the film industry, although the box office level has not been ideal in recent years, the level of the entire film industrialization has been significantly improved. From special effects production to scene construction, the gap between domestic films and international blockbusters is getting smaller and smaller.
In terms of “Nezha 2”, both the special effects and the plot are comparable to Hollywood animation works. In the eyes of many movie fans, this work is to Chinese animated films, which is to Chinese science fiction films, showing that the production level of Chinese films is no less than that of international blockbusters.
andAs an industrial product, whether the film is developed is not only reflected in its production level, but also in the overall development of related industrial chains.At present, according to Node Finance Observation, the entire industrial ecosystem of Chinese films is gradually improving from post-production special effects companies to equipment providers, to IP licensing and derivatives markets.
Among them, the path of commercial monetization of movie IP is becoming more and more mature. Take “Nezha 2” as an example. A number of peripheral products have been launched before the film was released, and a blind box that cooperates with brands such as Pop Mart and Kayou. , cards and other derivatives are popular in the market.
As the film becomes a hit in this year’s Spring Festival period, the “grille economy” (the economy around the two-dimensional culture) has developed rapidly,The peripheral products of “Nezha 2” are extremely popular, and the supply of derivatives such as blind boxes and figures is in short supply, especially the blind boxes jointly-branded by Pop Mart, which were once sold out.
My friend around Node Finance wanted to buy a set of blind boxes, but found that she “can’t buy it at all.” There are also related pictures circulating on multiple social platforms online, urging “Pop Mart, why don’t you work overtime to produce?”
In the view of Node Finance, the increasingly mature market for film IP peripheral products can not only bring additional benefits to movies, but more importantly, it can also extend the life cycle of IP. It can be foreseeable that film and television companies with strong IP value in the future will have better development prospects. This is very obvious in the success of the “Nezha” series. The future release of “Nezha 3” can almost be pre-ordered.
However, having an IP is not everything good. Specifically for the development of major film and television companies, how to face future development is still a big problem.
03 Winners take all, growth depends on high-quality content?
Today’s Spring Festival period hit a new box office record, while “complaining films” was also on the hot search.
According to data from Maoyan Professional Edition on February 4, “Nezha 2” accounted for 57.4% of the box office, while the screening accounted for only 38.2%. What does this mean? The audience wants to watch “Nezha 2”, but the number of scenes is not enough. This also proves from the data why “Nezha 2” is hard to get a ticket.
Except for “Nezha 2”, the box office share of the other five films is all lower than the screening proportion. Therefore, this has also attracted many netizens to complain, “Have the theater’s screening considered our feelings?” In the view of Node Finance,This situation is essentially a game between leading film and television companies.
The theater industry has a deep understanding of this. A theater owner once complained, “On the first day of the Lunar New Year, “The Legend of the Condor Heroes”, “The Gods 2”, “Nezha 2” and “Jiulong” all asked us to schedule films, each of which costs 30 yuan. %, how do you think we are placing it? “In fact, this situation is not uncommon in the “box office battle” of the Spring Festival period in previous years. In this year’s Spring Festival period, the biggest winner is undoubtedly the main investor and main controller behind “Nezha 2” Light Media.
The Spring Festival period is of great significance to Light Media. The fact that its performance in 2024 was able to maintain profitability in the first three quarters was largely due to its last Spring Festival period, betting on the “Article 20”, which performed well in the box office at that time. The main promotion of “Nezha 2” during this Spring Festival actually faced considerable pressure before it was released. In addition to the risk of the audience’s aesthetic changes in the film, the pressure from competitors is also very high.
However, “Nezha 2” was a big success in the end, and as the main investor and controller of “Nezha 2”, Light Media will share the account at about 40% of the box office (if the box office reaches 5 billion yuan, the account can be divided by 1.8 billion yuan). , coupled with derivative licensing income, this popular movie is expected to contribute more than 2 billion yuan in revenue to Light Media, which can account for half of its total revenue in 2024.
In contrast, the Wanda movie behind “Detective Chinatown 1900” and the Beijing culture behind “The Investiture of the Gods 2” are not as relaxed as Light Media.
Among them, as the fourth work of the “Detective Tang Series”, “Detective Tang 1900” has also attracted a large number of viewers by continuing the suspense + comedy style of the previous work, and ranked second in the box office during the Spring Festival. However, Node Finance found that the audience has become aesthetically exhausted by the classic IP of “Detective Chinatown”, and whether it can continue its appeal in the future is worth observing.
As the second work of the “Treasure of Gods Trilogy”, “The Investiture of Gods 2” has a clear polarization of reputation, casting a shadow on the future direction of this classic IP.
According to Node Finance, the total number of times many viewers watch movies every year is limited, and it is not uncommon to watch only one movie a year.This brings a possible result to the movie box office, which is “winner-takes all”.After watching “Nezha 2”, the probability of watching other movies may be greatly reduced after meeting certain movie needs.
so,For major film production companies, the overall recovery of the industry is a good thing, but the competitive pressure is still very fierce.
This is not only because the audience is becoming more and more picky, the aesthetic will become fatigued, and the freshness will become outdated, but also because if you encounter strong competitors, whether you can recover the cost may become a problem. For example, during this Spring Festival, the investments in “Operation Dragon” and “The Investiture of the Gods 2” are very large, one is 1 billion and the other is 700 million, both higher than “Nezha 2”, but the box office can only be from “Nezha 2”. It can be said that the two heavens are as good as ice and fire.
Overall, the box office level of the Spring Festival every year can usually account for about 20% of the whole year.The record-breaking box office performance of the Spring Festival in 2025 may mark the beginning of recovery of the film industry, opening a good start, and injecting confidence into the market throughout the year.Moreover, with the deepening of the vote subsidy policy, the potential of the entire consumer market is expected to be further enhanced.
In the future, leading film and television companies with high-quality content production capabilities and companies that can deploy IP derivative businesses may usher in sustained growth. Companies participating in the upstream and downstream of the film industry chain are also worthy of attention. Of course, the success of “Nezha 2” also shows that everything must be based on the quality of the film.
The era of allowing audiences to pay without brains has passed, and Chinese films are moving towards a new growth logic.
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