Data doesn’t lie, but data can make your jaw drop. Here, Deng Chao is crazy about playing short videos. After two months of being here, he has more than 15 million fans. Any video he posts can get a million likes, and he is nicknamed "Internet celebrity Lao Dengtou". Over there, the movies he starred in seemed to be possessed by an evil spirit. There were three movies in the past three years, and the total box office was less than 700 million. It was a miserable success. This magical reality of ice and fire was suddenly revealed in front of Deng Chao.
In February this year, Deng Chao registered an account on the short video platform, with an informal name called "Lao Dengtou". This time it can be considered as letting the tiger return to the mountain. As soon as he started, he followed the standard Internet gameplay, and the theme of the video was highly unified: looking for celebrity friends all over the world to "borrow fans". From Yang Mi, Lu Han to Chen He, he has picked up all the "wool" in the address book. The key is that they are not messing around, the video has a carefully designed unified title, and the operation idea is very clear. The result was an explosion of popularity, with 17 of the 18 videos having over a million likes, and the traffic volume was so high that even professional Internet celebrities would be ashamed.
Why is he so hot? It's simple, because he doesn't need to "adapt" to short videos at all. He himself is the "king of memes" and "source of happiness" of mobile. Before settling in, Deng Chao’s “crazy literature” and demonic slogans from variety shows and Weibo had long become classic materials for abstract online culture. "We are tired of logging!" "What are you doing?" He is the originator of these hot memes all over the Internet. His inherent sense of nonsensical joy and playful spirit that is not afraid of embarrassment are a perfect match for the short video gene. Others tried their best to imitate the net sense, but standing there, he was the essence of the net sense.
But once he returned to the big screen, his style took a turn for the worse. Take a look at his report card in the past three years: "China Ping Pong: Jedi Counterattack" barely exceeded 100 million at the box office, "Win the Winning" was over 200 million, and "Assassination of Novelists 2" was less than 400 million. The three movies combined are not as good as "The Breakup Master" (660 million) that he directed and starred in ten years ago. Compared with the total box office of his personal starring movies, which has exceeded 15 billion, this gap is like sliding from the top of the mountain to the bottom of the valley.
What's the problem? Many people will slap you on the thigh: There are too many variety shows, and the character will backfire! Deng Chao's "genius" and "funny" image in "Run" is so deeply rooted in the hearts of the people that when he wants to play a serious and profound hero or character in a movie, as soon as the audience sees his face, the magical laughter and chase scenes from the variety show will automatically play in their minds, and they will instantly become dramatic. Once this kind of label is attached, it is ten thousand times harder to peel it off than to put it on. Didn’t Deng Chao himself want to change? Of course I do. So he went to make inspirational films with main themes and try black humor themes, just to prove that he "can be serious". Unfortunately, the market's cognitive inertia is too strong, and the road to transformation is long and difficult.
Moreover, Deng Chao was far from the only one who fell into this embarrassing situation. Look at Huang Xiaoming, the box office of "Sunshine Club" starring Huang Xiaoming was only over 6 million; Chen Kun's "The Spectator" was even worse, with less than 3 million. These Mesozoic people who once were able to "single box office" have collectively encountered a cold wave in the market. The days when the traditional "face recognition" can attract audiences to the theater are really gone forever. Audience tastes are changing, and young audiences have become the main force, but there are fewer and fewer top film projects suitable for them.
Therefore, Deng Chao’s all-out effort to enter short videos is definitely not a sign of “not doing his job properly” or a “degeneration”, but more like an extremely sober and proactive “strategic shift” and “survival experiment”. When the old road in the movie became narrower and narrower, he decisively jumped into the "ocean of traffic" with the highest concentration of young people and started swimming on his own. He is no longer just an actor waiting to be selected, but has transformed into an IP "old Deng head" who actively produces content and talks directly with young people. Through repeated memes and interactions, he turned young users who might not have gone to the cinema once in several years, but who indulged in short videos every day, into his fans again. This is essentially reorganizing its own "audience assets" and using its huge online traffic and influence to hedge against the risk of box office fluctuations on the big screen.
Would this, one might say, further deplete his seriousness and mystique as an actor? There are definitely risks. But this may be a dangerous road that must be taken. Today, when the film and television industry is deeply tied to short videos, instead of waiting for a "good script" that you don't know whether it will come, it is better to grab the real "attention" with your own hands. Can this road bring him back to the top of the box office? No one knows. But at least, this "10 billion movie king" did not lie down. He changed the track and was still running with all his strength, trying to carve out another world for himself and the Mesozoic actors in the same situation. This in itself is worthy of a "come on".
