In previous years during the Spring Festival, the most discussed topic was "which movie to watch during the Spring Festival". This year there is an additional question – "which theater to watch it in".
On the morning of New Year's Day, the first batch of viewers who walked into Wanda Cinema discovered that before the movie started, there was a special New Year's "Easter Egg" on the screen – Guo Fan, Wu Jing, Andy Lau, and Shen Teng were sitting together, appearing as a civilized viewing reminder, and one second of the scene was from "The Wandering Earth 3", which will only be released on New Year's Day in 2027. Someone exclaimed on the spot: "I didn't expect to come to Wanda Cinemas to watch a movie and see Shen Teng's appearance in "The Wandering Earth 3" exposed for the first time!"
Wanda Movie "The Wandering Earth 3" New Year Charity Poster
According to statistics from Wanda Films, on the first day of the Lunar New Year alone, this New Year charity poster was played on more than 710 directly-operated cinemas and more than 6,000 screens across the country. It is expected that the cumulative number of moviegoers during the Spring Festival will exceed 23 million.
The lobby of Wanda Cinema Zhengzhou Erqi Wanda Plaza store is crowded
Not only in China, some of Wanda Film's Hoyts movie theaters in Australia and New Zealand have also launched the film simultaneously. It is expected that there will be 550 screenings in the first week of the Spring Festival, attracting many overseas Chinese to check in and watch movies to feel the New Year atmosphere from their hometown.
HOYTS Ormiston Cinema, Auckland, New Zealand
Promise the "romance" of movie fans a year in advance
Wanda Films is the first in the industry to be the first to expose exclusive content for next year's blockbusters in cinemas. This patch of "The Wandering Earth 3" was exclusively released in theaters instead of streaming media. It is no longer a short video that can be scratched off at will, but has become a ceremony unique to the theater. This is Wanda Film’s tribute to the essence of cinema: using the screen to present content that belongs on the screen.
And this ceremony is an exclusive gift for loyal movie fans. Those audiences who come to the Spring Festival season year after year are the most solid foundation for Chinese movies. Wanda Film upgraded them from "viewers" to "witnesses". This romantic agreement made one year in advance is a warm two-way journey between filmmakers and fans.
In fact, this is the second consecutive year that Wanda Films has created surprises during the Spring Festival. Last year, they launched "Tang Detective 1900" New Year's greeting Easter eggs and New Year's charity short films by Wang Hedi, Liu Haoran, and Qu Chuxiao, which were very popular. This year, in addition to the New Year charity patch for "The Wandering Earth 3", there are also New Year blessing short films from Wanda movie star partners Chen Haoyu, Yao Chen, and Chen Lijun.
For two consecutive years, in the same schedule and on the same screen, "Come to Wanda Cinema to see different Spring Festival shows" is changing from a slogan to a new habit that audiences naturally look forward to. Some people compare the two-year lineup on social platforms, some start to guess which IP will appear next year, and some fans start making wishes a year in advance – this sense of anticipation itself may be more valuable than a single exposure. When audiences begin to choose a certain theater because "there may be surprises", the consumption logic of the Spring Festival stalls is undergoing subtle changes.
A theater is not just a place to show movies
Making the exclusive public welfare patch a "repertoire" for Wanda Cinema's Spring Festival season is Wanda Film's rethinking of the role of cinemas.
Since Chen Zhixi became the chairman of Wanda Film, relying on its deep accumulation in the content field and top-level resource integration capabilities, Wanda Film has begun to launch a series of exclusive content exclusive to theaters. This year's "The Wandering Earth 3" New Year charity patch is due to her deep understanding of content creation and precise grasp of audience psychology – injecting theater thinking into the content planning stage to truly connect the content end and the screening end. Using content thinking as a channel, and then using the power of channels to feed back content, this is the core logic of Wanda Films injecting new value into theaters.
Valuable exclusive patches are broadening the audience’s content experience in the theater. According to Chen Zhixi’s plan, the cinema should not just be a movie screening terminal, but should bring together the most popular art and entertainment forms in real time, so that users can not only experience wonderful content after coming to the “super entertainment space”, but also continuously gain emotional value in coherent life scenes.
Wanda Movies x My Little Pony New Year Party Themed Space
Wanda Movies x My Little Pony Joint Series
From the exclusive content of "The Wandering Earth 3", to carrying the Pinkie Pie Popcorn "Pain Bucket" co-branded with My Little Pony on his back during the Spring Festival to check in and interact in the movie theater full of "magic" atmosphere, to encountering the "bear ticket inspector" when taking the children to watch "Bear Bear"… Wanda Cinema is using a series of continuous actions to implement the strategic concept of "super entertainment space" into a perceptible and beautiful experience. When theaters begin to use exclusive content to cultivate audience habits, what they can carry will be far more than the length of a movie.
Behind the "New Year custom" of watching movies
Being able to play is just an appearance. Wanda Movies allows more than 710 directly-operated movie theaters across the country to complete the same thing at the same time and to the same standards. Behind it is a set of scientific management strategies and a carefully polished system.
As a benchmark brand for Chinese cinema chains, Wanda Movies is committed to building a full-scenario service system based on "five-star cinema" standards. From the implementation of cutting-edge audio-visual technology upgrades, immersive scene innovation, to the strict implementation of full-link service standardization processes, to the continuous advancement of social responsibility practices such as barrier-free viewing facilities and charity screenings – when a cinema can not only create surprises with content but also provide service guarantee experience, the audience's choice is no longer an accident.
The direct result of this choice is reflected in the list of the top 10 theaters at the national box office on New Year's Day, 9 of which are occupied by Wanda Cinemas, such as Taiyuan Longfor Wanda Cinema, Binzhou Wanda Cinema, Fuyang Wanda Cinema, etc. This means that when Wanda Movies creates surprises with exclusive content, the audience is voting with their actual actions, pushing Wanda Cinemas into the first choice for watching movies during the Spring Festival.
Wanda Cinema Chain is the largest cinema chain in the country. It not only has the advantage of scale, but also maintains high-density coverage in core ticket warehouses. In the theaters with the best box office, users who watch movies the most frequently and have the strongest willingness to spend are gathered. This is also the resource that the film studios most want to compete for. And Wanda Film is achieving precise empowerment through exclusive content and channels. The composition of the Spring Festival audience is different from that of the daily schedule. To accurately reach this group, it requires both precise time windows and screen scenes. For a large-scale IP like "The Wandering Earth 3", this patch is equivalent to locking in tens of millions of high-value viewers a year before the movie is released. This Spring Festival, the group of people reached by the Wanda Cinema scene will most likely go to the theater again next year for this movie.
When audiences are looking forward to next year's Spring Festival due to surprises one after another, theaters are no longer just movie projection terminals. Perhaps, this is another meaning of the existence of a movie theater: it is not just a place to show movies, but also a reason to add a little surprise, a little expectation, and a reason to start looking forward to it a year in advance.
