华尔街日报：从短剧到哪吒，中国IP离迪士尼模式还有多远

作者：华尔街日报        来源：一天一篇外刊

Artsy film critics are unlikely to be impressed by China’s micro-dramas. Even so, the roughly two-minute episodes, which cram soap-opera plots into a short-video format, are wildly popular. Watched almost exclusively on mobile devices, viewers can scroll mindlessly through episodes as they would clips on TikTok. Revenue in China from micro-dramas is projected to nearly double this year, to 90bn yuan ($12.7bn)—exceeding sales of cinema tickets. Chinese studios shot 40,000 of them in the first eight months of the year (a typical series has 90 episodes).

中国的短剧可能不太受电影艺术评论家的青睐，但却在观众中非常流行。这些约两分钟的小短剧将肥皂剧剧情浓缩成了短视频。观众通过手机像刷TikTok一样观看剧集。预计今年中国短剧的收入将近翻倍，达到900亿元人民币（约127亿美元），超过了电影票房。今年前八个月，中国的制作公司拍摄了4万集短剧（每个系列通常有90集）。

The micro-drama craze is but one example of the creative surge under way in China. Earlier this year “Ne Zha 2”, produced by a Chinese studio, became the best-performing animated film of all time at the worldwide box office. “Black Myth: Wukong”, a video game, similarly captivated players when it was released a year ago.

短剧热潮只是中国创意浪潮中的一个缩影。今年初，由中国制片公司制作的《哪吒2》成为全球票房最高的动画电影。黑神话悟空（一款电子游戏），去年发布时同样吸引了大量玩家。

Unlike in the West, cashing in on content often means focusing on e-commerce, rather than ads or subscriptions. Popular creators on Douyin hawk merchandise on live-stream channels. Bilibili has created membership communities that give users exclusive access to products and live performances. Micro-dramas may move in that direction, too. Chen Ou, the founder of Jumei Film Base, a leading micro-drama studio in Zhengzhou, says his company is starting to monetise its star power with live-streaming sales. AliFish, a platform run by Alibaba, China’s biggest e-commerce company, lets the owners of creative content pair up with businesses that will manufacture and sell merchandise for them, as well as marketers eager to put their characters to work.

与西方不同，中国的内容变现通常侧重于电商而非广告或订阅。抖音上的热门创作者通过直播带货来推广商品，B站则建立了自己会员社区，为用户提供独家产品和现场演出等特殊权益。短剧也可能朝这个方向发展。聚美影业基地的创始人陈欧表示，作为郑州领先的短剧制作公司，旗下公司正在通过直播带货的方式，借助明星效应进行商业化。阿里巴巴旗下的电商平台阿里鱼，帮助内容创作者与企业对接，进行商品制造与销售，同时也为那些希望通过IP角色进行营销的品牌提供合作机会。

The centrality of local tech giants to the entertainment industry is only growing. ByteDance, the owner of Douyin, often invests in content creators who have become popular on its short-video apps. Tencent has bought stakes in hundreds of gaming, film and TV studios, and holds stakes in content distributors such as Bilibili and Xiaohongshu. And nearly all large tech companies in China—even those with little experience in entertainment, such as Baidu, a search giant, and Pinduoduo, another e-commerce firm—are snapping up rights to micro-dramas.

本土科技巨头在娱乐行业中的地位正不断提升。字节跳动（抖音母公司）常常投资那些在抖音上走红的内容创作者。腾讯也已购买了数百家游戏、电影和电视工作室的股份，并持有像B站和小红书这样的内容分发平台的股份，现在，几乎所有大型科技公司（即使那些在娱乐行业经验较少的公司），如搜索引擎巨头百度和电商平台拼多多——也都在短剧的版权。

Whether all this will result in the type of enduring intellectual property that powers the Western entertainment industry—think James Bond or Star Wars—is unclear. Franchises that resonate across generations are costly and slow to develop, notes Ivy Ng of DWS, a German asset manager. They require original narratives and significant continuing investment. Many of China’s recent cultural successes have relied more on celebrity endorsements than on creative brilliance. The country’s entertainment industry remains “focused on virtual, code-based and asset-light operations”, says Ms Ng.

这一切是否最终会催生出像西方娱乐产业那样经久不衰的品牌IP——例如詹姆斯·邦德或星球大战——目前尚不明朗。德国资产管理公司DWS的Ivy Ng指出，那些能够产生跨代共鸣的品牌或系列既昂贵又发展缓慢。它们需要原创的故事情节和持续的大量投资。而中国近期的许多文化成功更多地依赖于名人代言，而非创意才华。Ng 女士表示，中国的娱乐产业仍然依赖数字技术、平台和轻资产运营”。

作者：华尔街日报        来源：一天一篇外刊