Star Wars: The Force Awakens allowed Chinese filmmakers to see the enormous potential and infinitely bright future of China's film market, while at the same time making them feel the pressure and crisis.
At the Directors Guild's commendation ceremony, the famous mainland director Feng Daya stated, "Star Wars: The Force Awakens grossed over 400 million yuan in a single day and surpassed 1 billion in three days. Duke Rosenberg truly has no rivals, but domestic films must hold the line!"
Of course, in China's film market, where the number of screens is still increasing, these records may soon be broken one after another. The true significance and value of so-called "box office records" is something that varies from person to person.
However, it's undeniable that these numbers indirectly reflect the popularity of Star Wars: The Force Awakens in China, and they also allow Duke to continue dominating the top spot of China's all-time box office chart — a position he has held since The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.
While promoting its success in the Chinese market, Duke also specifically asked Tina Fey to collect some North American media analyses to be placed across Chinese media and the internet, further boosting The Force Awakens' discussion and exposure.
"Star Wars: The Force Awakens has set a benchmark for all film franchises in terms of diversity within its leading cast — featuring Chinese-American actor Daniel Wu and Latino actor Oscar Isaac. This film is also among the few blockbusters of its kind where 'male dominance' is significantly weakened, giving female actors equal opportunities to shine and showcase their talent."
"This is an important lesson for Hollywood to learn. They not only have a diverse leading cast but also characters who are rich and full of life, never deliberately pandering."
Chinese media reports even quoted a portion of North American data: "In North America, 49% of Star Wars: The Force Awakens' audience were women. The racial breakdown shows 37% Hispanic, 35% White, 24% Asian, 10% African American, and others making up the remainder."
In fact, this was also part of the reason The Force Awakens sold so well in North America — the proportion of non-white audiences exceeded 70%.
Against the backdrop of rising Asian and Latino audience ratios, emphasizing diversity proved to be an extremely profitable approach.
Every person who entered the cinema to watch Star Wars: The Force Awakens could find a character on screen they could identify with. Duke's deliberate effort to highlight diversity among the leads helped the film gain countless fans across South America and other parts of the world.
Similarly, if those predominantly black nations had sufficiently developed economies, Duke would surely have created an African lead as well. Unfortunately, almost all black-dominated countries are synonymous with chaos and poverty.
To draw attention during promotion, a film's production company and its people can always create a lot of buzzworthy topics.
While Star Wars: The Force Awakens was a box-office sensation in China, Duke was busy with local promotional events, and the publicity topics generated in North America were immediately relayed by Warner Bros. across the Pacific, further amplifying the film's halo.
This time, the person who spoke up was Stan Lee, and the topic he brought up was an old one — something that had long appeared within Marvel's upper management and on Duke's desk, but this was the first time it was made public.
"Can Star Wars and the Marvel Universe crossover? Could such a fantastical idea actually happen?"
This became one of the hottest topics online that week in both North America and China.
Now that Lucasfilm and Marvel Studios both belong under Duke's banner, many fans began to speculate whether Duke might one day make the two cinematic universes intersect on screen.
During one Marvel promotional event, a North American reporter posed this question to Stan Lee, who responded optimistically: "I don't know how many characters can fit into one movie, but if Duke thinks it's doable, he'll definitely find a way to make the two universes cross."
Having multiple independent characters appear together in one film is already a Marvel tradition, with The Avengers being the prime example. Stan Lee added, "In The Avengers, Duke already united several superheroes into one film — we could include even more characters. Wouldn't it be fun if Luke Skywalker joined the Avengers?"
If Marvel and Star Wars, two universe-level IPs, were ever to unite, the resulting future would truly be unimaginable.
Of course, Stan Lee's comments were made under Duke's direction, serving as a joint promotion for Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Avengers: Age of Ultron, which was set to release in May. From Duke's own plans, even if such a "crossover" were to happen, it would take quite a few more years.
As for whether it would make sense — that's hardly the point.
As long as the profits are high enough, Duke wouldn't care which universe it is — even Calabash Brothers or Ultraman could be added in, with no concern for exhausting fans' emotional attachment.
The marketing campaign for Star Wars: The Force Awakens practically dominated every major space across China's internet and traditional media.
Anyone who opened any kind of app that week would be surprised to find The Force Awakens' posters occupying every opening splash screen — from Ele.me, Moji Weather, and QQ Zone, to Sina Weibo, Didi, and Kuaidi Taxi — almost none were spared.
On the streets, one could see Star Wars elements everywhere as well.
From mall decorations to merchandise displays, and if you happened to pass by the Le Royal Méridien Shanghai recently, you'd even see two lightsabers standing atop its roof, pointing straight into the sky.
At this point, every movie released in China is something Hollywood studios place great expectations upon. With only a limited number of annual import quotas for revenue-sharing films, since Duke and Lucasfilm went to such great lengths to bring the movie into China, they naturally hoped it would make a huge profit.
When Star Wars first became popular years ago, China's film market was still very small. Moreover, the Star Wars series itself was quite old, and its sci-fi elements and vast world-building lacked the cultural foundation to resonate with Chinese audiences. As a result, Star Wars had virtually no fanbase in China.
In previous years, the once-famous phrase "May the Force be with you" meant little to most Chinese audiences.
So, what kind of people make up today's Chinese moviegoers? Duke has, over the years, commissioned professional agencies to gather such data: the post-80s and post-90s generations — those who never experienced the Star Wars era — contribute 77% of China's total box office.
Just five years ago, there was still a massive gap between China's mainstream moviegoers and the Star Wars franchise.
Back then, Duke's biggest task for Kathleen Kennedy and Lucasfilm, in coordination with Warner Bros., was to use all kinds of marketing resources to bridge that gap.
At the very least, the variety of marketing efforts needed to spark public curiosity — to make people walk into theaters and experience the baptism of the Force.
Thus, Lucasfilm's strategy was to let Star Wars elements dominate every inch of the public's view through all kinds of publicity and merchandise, while leveraging numerous KOLs and fans to generate online buzz.
In short — wherever the eyes could see and the ears could hear, it was all Star Wars.
All of this had been carefully planned long in advance, starting from the moment Duke acquired Lucasfilm.
And the years of relentless effort also became one of the fundamental reasons behind the box office explosion of Star Wars: The Force Awakens in China.
In addition, the film's success in China couldn't be separated from the promotional support of its partners. Among the many partners of Duke and Lucasfilm, some were multinational corporations that had maintained long-term collaborations with Duke — for example, LEGO, which had always been one of the main manufacturers and distributors of Duke's movie merchandise, and China's Yili, which had been one of the main sponsors ever since the production of Transformers.
Whether it was LEGO or Yili, they shared one common trait — both possessed powerful retail networks and the financial strength and capability to execute high-intensity, high-density marketing campaigns. Each was able to provide substantial support for Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
Therefore, it was easy to imagine what a grand spectacle it must have been when Star Wars: The Force Awakens was released in China as every brand, in coordination with Lucasfilm and Warner Bros. Greater China's pre-set release schedule, launched their promotional campaigns simultaneously.
Among all the collaborating brands, Yili perhaps carried out the largest-scale promotional campaign for the Chinese release of Star Wars. The dairy company printed images of Stormtroopers and BB-8 on its advertisements and placed them virtually everywhere possible from subway stations, bus stops, newspapers, supermarkets, malls, and convenience stores, to mobile apps and even WeChat Moments.
Yili even collaborated with popular Weibo humor accounts and many Chinese celebrities for embedded advertisements.
Of course, this was also an excellent promotional opportunity for Yili itself.
In terms of distribution channels, this was Yili's most comprehensive campaign to date. Apart from Weikezi, which missed the schedule due to timing issues, all of Yili's product lines participated in this collaboration. The attention these ads received was more than ten times higher than usual.
Over the following days, Star Wars: The Force Awakens continued its triumphant run in China, with its daily box office never falling below 100 million RMB. After a full week in theaters, its cumulative box office in China had already surpassed 1.5 billion RMB.
This also set a new record for the fastest film in Chinese history to surpass 1.5 billion RMB at the box office.
Faced with such a phenomenal box office performance, many Chinese filmmakers also went to theaters to watch it — though quite a few did so with a critical attitude.
For instance, Feng Daya publicly stated during an interview that Star Wars: The Force Awakens was "extremely boring." After the first twenty minutes, he found it unbearable and chose to leave early.
In a way, such criticism was not necessarily a bad thing after all, no promotional campaign can keep hyping the same topic forever.
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