Comedy+bar, can twist FunAge still identify young people's jokes?

Recently, Stage One, the first music and drama wave bar in China, opened in Beihua Machine Love Workshop in Beijing Plain.

Surprisingly, such a wonderful combination is another bold cross-border of the comedy brand Mahua FunAge.

This is the first bar industry owned by Mahua FunAge and the first combination of music, drama and bars in China. What kind of pleasure can a tipsy atmosphere, a shaking glass, and a clever combination of art and alcohol collide with?

Obviously, under the new consumption trend, Mahua FunAge is trying to capture more young audiences in the performance consumption market, hoping to break the traditional performance scenes and forms of the original drama in the form of drama+bar, increase the sense of interaction with the audience, make the drama more youthful and fashionable, and let the audience enjoy a layer of visual and spiritual pleasure in the relaxed atmosphere of drinking.

Judging from the current official ticket price, the original price of a single person in 380 yuan is nearly twice that of Mahua FunAge Theater. The business hours are 18: 30- 2: 00 am, which is not a long time for a bar. This is another cross-border taste change after the twist FunAge changed from drama to movies, short plays and variety shows.

0 1

Breaking the Circle: Spring Festival Evening in Ethnic Drama

Mahua FunAge was founded in 2003. The founding team comes from a wonderful combination, consisting of Zhang Chen, an architectural engineer, the editor-in-chief of the magazine and You, a drama director. The three originally aimed at the film and television industry, registered the "Beijing Free Element Film and Television Culture" company with less than 300,000 start-up funds, and obtained the film and television adaptation right of Zhong Mo's novel "The Difficult Love of a Diamond Bachelor". But I didn't expect a sudden SARS to ruin the original plan of the three people, and then turned their attention to drama.

At that time, the drama market was almost completely monopolized by the national regular army, and there were few private theatrical troupes, so it was not easy to survive. Because of the high cost of drama, renting a theater, signing actors and creating rehearsals all need financial support, and it is certain that it is difficult for the new troupe to sell tickets when its popularity is not high in the early stage, which also means that it is basically losing money and earning money in the early stage of drama.

In 2003, a comedy "I'll give you a twist if you want to eat" was staged in Shaw Theatre of China Opera, which was the first work of the twist FunAge and the source of its name. At that time, Shen Teng, who was still a senior in the Art College of the People's Liberation Army, was interviewed for this play and got a supporting role, so he became attached to Twist FunAge.

However, the difficulty of the start was unexpected. At that time, the team of Twist FunAge, which had no market appeal, booked 40 performances, but rarely sold tickets. Shen Teng later recalled in the program Interview with Yang Lan that the most bleak performance was that only seven tickets were sold on a snowy day, and the theater manager dismissed the performance out of sympathy. The performers and the creative team stood at the entrance of the theater and apologized to the audience who came to see the play. "Come to an audience to give back a ticket, and then attach a taxi fare back and forth. At that time, I felt that there was no future and no hope. " Shen Teng recalled.

Fortunately, the plot of "I want to wring you now" is hilarious and humorous. At the same time, it conveys warmth and positive energy in the happy ending. With the increase of performances, the turning point is more and more obvious. Besides, Zhang Chen, the founder, tried his best to mobilize the audience to see the play, and even used buses to pick them up in batches. "After losing 30 games, I finally started to have a chance to turn over." Zhang Chen later recalled the past and said.

Subsequently, MCA Fornag successively staged Love Flu, Crazy Stone, Somali Pirates, Earl of Wulong Mountain and other works, which enabled MCA Fornag to gradually explore his own comedy style and gain a foothold on the stage of drama. It is understood that from the second drama "Twist 2 Love Influenza", the company has almost no losses; By 2009, after 57 performances, "Sweet and Salty Match" will have millions of dollars in profits; In 2008, Twist FunAge turned the New Year's Eve stage play into a regular performance; In 2009, the company gradually clarified its direction and planned to take the initiative to borrow money to help.

It was also during this period that with the increase of explosive works and performances, the founding team strengthened its determination to expand and considered a longer-term capital path. If MCA FunAge wants to go public in the future, there are only two capital markets in the mainland, Shanghai and Shenzhen. In order to improve the brand effect, Mahua FunAge chose to expand its performance business in these two cities first. So, 20 1 1, Twist FunAge began to go out of Beijing and go all out to expand to Shenzhen and Shanghai.

It was during this period that MCA Fornag's fame rose continuously and entered the sight of CCTV, which ushered in the first turning point of his fate. In 20 12, he boarded CCTV Spring Festival Gala with the sketch "Happiness Today". This is also the first time that Shen Teng and Mary have been known to the public, and they have successfully created the well-known "Hao Jian". After being well received on the stage of the Spring Festival Evening, Shen Teng and Mary, the ace comedy partners, have been on the stage of the Spring Festival Evening for four years in a row, laying a reputation foundation among the audience, and the team behind them, Mahua FunAge, has gradually become familiar to the public.

02

Cross-border: 5 billion king of comedy.

After 20 12 entered the stage of the Spring Festival Evening, Mahua FunAge successfully took a step forward in capital, obtained an investment of 45 million yuan from China Cultural Industry Investment Fund, and transferred 15% equity. This also provides an economic foundation for Mahua FunAge to further attract outstanding talents, polish high-quality works and enter the film industry.

Because the drama itself is relatively small, even though Ma Huateng FunAge cultivated Shen Teng Mary into a signature figure with the help of the Spring Festival Evening, its popularity is still limited to the first-and second-tier areas, and the space is limited. Slowly, the team had the idea of transformation.

In 20 12, the new year's release of "Thailand" broke through in many blockbusters and won126.7 billion yuan at the box office, becoming the first domestic commercial film to break one billion yuan. Seeing the success of Sorry Thailand, Zhang Chen, the founder of Mahua FunAge, told the team, should we take movies seriously? So the team chose the drama Goodbye Mr. Loser, which premiered that year, and made a film adaptation.

With a lot of market-tested comedy performance experience accumulated in more than ten years, the script is mature and close to the film narrative, and Mahua FunAge adapts the film with ease. In addition, the domestic comedy film market was booming at that time, with 69 comedies released in just 20 15 years, accounting for nearly 20% of domestic films released that year, and the box office was second only to action films, accounting for 19.7%. Goodbye Mr. Loser was released in 20 15, but this movie with a small budget of only 20 million yuan has become a dark horse in the National Day file, with a box office of14.4 million yuan, ranking fifth in the cinema's annual total box office. For Mahua FunAge, a cutting-edge team that has just entered the film industry, it is a blockbuster.

At the same time, the popularity of Goodbye Mr. Loser also boosted Mahua FunAge by going up one flight of stairs. In that year, the revenue increased by 654.38+054.8% to 383 million yuan, and the net profit was 65.438+300 million yuan. 20 15 years1October 20th,100000 b round of financing was completed, and the investor was Wei Ying capital; On February 29th, 20 15, 15, Twist FunAge officially listed the new third board. After two rounds of fixed increase in a week, its valuation increased rapidly from 300 million to 5 billion, and "China's First Drama" officially became the label of Mahua FunAge.

Twist FunAge adapted a mature drama into a movie, so that the explosive content he output looks methodological after excluding the influence of luck. After Goodbye, Mr. Loser, Mahua FunAge successively produced Donkey's Water, Shameful Iron Fist and the Richest Man in Xihong City, which won 65,438+72 million, 22/kloc-0,300,000 and 25.47 million box office respectively, and became popular movies with both word-of-mouth and box office harvests.

The team's two famous players, Shen Teng and Mary, have become the biggest beneficiaries of the popularity of Twist FunAge.

Before 20 15, Mary only appeared as a supporting role and a walk-on in major film and television dramas. However, after Goodbye, Mr. Loser, she not only became the protagonist of Shameful Iron Fist, but also appeared in a comedy that was not promoted by MCA FunAge. Relying on this series of works, Mary became one of the few female comedians with box office appeal on the mainland big screen.

As for Shen Teng, she has gradually become one of the most appealing actors in the domestic comedy circle, and has released many hit movies in succession, and has been called "the Billion Box Office Goddess" by netizens. In 20 18, the box office of "The Richest Man in Xihong City" starring him went straight to 2.5 billion; In the following Spring Festival, he starred in two most popular comedies, Crazy Alien and Flying Life. In 20021year, the cumulative box office of "Hi Mom" exceeded 3.83 billion, which also made Shen Teng the first actor with a box office of 20 billion in the history of China movies.

20 18 When the whole people sang "Burn My Calories", the revenue of Twist FunAge exceeded 10 billion, up by 17.36% year-on-year, of which film and television revenue was 340 million, which was the same as the performance revenue of 380 million. In addition, the company staged more than 2,500 stage plays throughout the year, and the cumulative box office of the films produced exceeded 3 1 100 million. At the same time, as Shen Teng, Mary and Allen have all grown into well-known comedians, MCA FunAge's income from artists' brokerage this year reached 292 million yuan, a substantial increase of 265,438+03.83% over the previous year. Personally, Shen Teng, Mary and Allen earned 92.49 million, 78.46 million and 25.8 million respectively.

Mahua FunAge has also formally formed the operation mode of "drama+artist agent+film" in Sanma. However, when the financial data is improving, Ma Huateng's IPO road is not very smooth. One and a half years after the listing of the New Third Board, MCA FunAge was restricted by the liquidity of stocks, so it turned to sprint A shares, but it ended in failure and withdrew its IPO application.

At the same time, the methodology of twist FunAge's drama remake began to fail. After the drama "Aunt Richard" was adapted into a movie, it did not continue the previous explosion record. In the end, the box office was only 600 million, and the Douban score was only 4.6, which became the lowest score of Mahua FunAge.

And from a small drama industry to a top comedy industry, Twist FunAge has also begun to have various troubles.

03

Innovation: Can you keep the new traffic password?

The first is the failure of the explosion movie formula. The secret that Twist FunAge once mastered the traffic password was that his movie IP was tempered in the stage play, and various paragraphs were modified according to the feedback from the audience. However, the drama version of Aunt Richard was released by Mahua FunAge on 20 16, and it broke 300 performances in less than one year. It was also well received by the audience in many original stage plays, but the film failed to continue the explosion legend of Twist FunAge. The routinization and vulgarization of the story has become a slot for the audience to criticize.

However, "Love Hug" released on the first day of 20021New Year's Day, with a total box office of 600 million and a douban score of 5.3, failed to meet expectations. In this regard, Mahua FunAge began to realize the changes in audience tastes and market trends, gradually slowed down the output of movies, put more energy into polishing product content, and opened up more new comedy content and program types. In addition to online dramas and short dramas, new dramas such as "Fortune Comes" and "Drunk Winner" are also launched offline, which are well received.

It is worth noting that, after the richest man in Xihong, Shen Teng, who is regarded as a comedy symbol, has not starred in MCA FunAge movies for a long time, but only made a guest appearance in a supporting role. This is another obvious problem that Mahua FunAge encountered, the dating of head artists.

In recent years, it is obvious that Mahua FunAge has begun to use the model of "bringing the old with the new" to promote newcomers out of the circle, but the effect is not obvious. Because comedy itself is an art activity that needs economic benefits, several comedians who are popular in the circle now, such as Shen Teng, Jia Ling, Yun-peng Yue and Mary, have gone through at least ten years of obscurity and painstaking cultivation, and there is no way to become stars quickly. As Shen Teng, Mary and Allen set up their own studios from 20 17, the head artists gradually developed independently and diversified. It will take time for Twist FunAge to cultivate new people who can take on heavy responsibilities.

The long-term recurrence of the epidemic since 2020 will inevitably interfere with the offline performance business. Therefore, Mahua FunAge's coping strategy is to try to develop new online works as much as possible, whether it is theme or repertoire form, from online movies to online short plays to variety shows, but comedy is the core. Among them, after the first online short play "Dear, I didn't expect it" was launched, Douban scored 7.4, and Tik Tok topic reading broke 65.438+0.3 billion. But nowadays, online relaxation and decompression programs are gradually becoming rich and varied, and talk shows, reality shows, comedy variety shows, etc. have also brought considerable competitive pressure for Mahua FunAge to enter the online field.

In addition to online diversified content production, offline has gradually broken the traditional theater viewing mode, and tried to cooperate with immersive comedies such as commercial complexes and public spaces to make the audience become participants in the performance.

For example, in September this year, the "Crazy Barber Shop" released by Twist FunAge began a long-term performance in Moon Bay, Ruihong Tiandi, Shanghai. At present, the barley score is 9.2, the cat's eye score is 9.2, and the venue is full. During the performance, the "detective" will ask the audience for clues one by one, and the audience can also ask the actors directly to promote the development of the plot. This form of performance also tests the ability of the actors to improvise, and almost 50% of each performance is improvisation.

In addition, Crazy Barber Shop gives the audience the feeling of "immersive case solving" and can also experience "immersive service". Barber shops do not set a dividing line between stage and audience. Perm caps and shampoo chairs are part of the stage. Actors are also gold stylists in barbershops. During the intermission, they will invite the audience to experience the real shampoo process, as well as one-on-one vip services such as wig piece trimming and manicure.

By the same token, the drama bar launched by Twist FunAge this time also hopes to break the traditional performance scenes and forms of the original drama in the form of drama+bar, increase the sense of interaction with the audience, make the drama more youthful and fashionable, and let the audience enjoy a layer of visual and spiritual pleasure in the relaxed atmosphere of drinking.

Thanks to the new consumption trend, offline talk shows, secret rooms, script killings and other immersive interactive programs are increasingly loved by the post-00 generation. Mahua FunAge also hopes to develop more immersive, interactive and participatory drama forms on the comedy track, trying to capture more young audiences in the new performance consumer market.

Although the epidemic situation and the tightening of regulatory policies have had a great impact on the entertainment field, the endogenous motivation of Twist FunAge to constantly break the circle with solid content has never changed. This time, can the twist FunAge still recognize the jokes of young people?