Chollywood rising

[GeneChing]

Posted: Sat., Mar. 24, 2012, 4:00am PT
Studio complex puts China in the picture
Huairou Film Base hopes to lure Westerners
By Clifford Coonan
HUAIROU, CHINA -- About an hour's drive from Beijing, inside a giant studio complex, you'll encounter armies of kung fu specialists being put through their paces by China's top helmers. Or you might see Nationalist Kuomintang soldiers marching through 1920s Shanghai.

Drive through a gate proclaiming "China Film" and there's an arrangement of artillery weapons, all at the disposal of a prospective filmmaker

Welcome to Huairou Film Base, which in a few short years has emerged as the center of Chinese film production, and home to some of the biggest movie projects in this rapidly expanding market.

Following the Chinese government's announcement that it's prepared to open up a bit more to Hollywood by allowing more movies to be imported into China and by giving overseas producers more of the take from films distributed here, the base could well become a major destination for U.S. bizzers.

"This year, we had around 120 feature films, and the rest were TV shows," says Zhang Hongtao, a Huairou spokesman.

The complex, the largest of its kind in Asia, covers 131 acres and cost $294 million to build. It's cleanly landscaped and provides facilities for all aspects of production and post-production with 16 studios, a digital production shop and a prop/costume warehouse.

The facility has provided the famous Ningrong Street for the epic based on the classic novel "A Dream of the Red Chamber," as well as the cave where Mao Zedong lived during China's Civil War.

A visit to the costume warehouse includes some of the light suits from the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in 2008, as well as Gong Li's costume for "Curse of the Golden Flower," day beds with shell inlays, and a real throne used by the Qing Dynasty's Pu Yi, known to Western auds from Bernardo Bertolucci's "The Last Emperor."

The throne is a gift from the culture ministry.

Since it opened, the fortunes of the facility have reflected the boom in the Chinese film biz. Revenues last year were around one billion yuan ($160 million).

"This is the first stop. All the projects made here come here first," Zhang says. "We organize not only shooting, but also development, catering, hotels and services for producers."

Many of China's most popular recent domestic films, including "Let the Bullets Fly" and "Forever Enthralled," were made here.

Now the studio is looking further afield for future growth.

In a recent coup for Huairou, Keanu Reeves signed on to shoot "Man of Tai Chi," a $32 million contemporary chopsocky and tai chi actioner that will film here. The cast includes Tiger Chen and Karen Mok, with Reeves as a bad guy -- and martial arts choreography by Yuen Woo-ping ("The Matrix").

One of the film's backers is China Film Group, the Chinese state film colossus that is also behind the Huairou Film Base. Other coin comes from Village Roadshow Entertainment Group Asia, Wanda Media and Universal.

The Huairou boom also has benefited the nearby town of Xiantai, whose denizens appear as extras and works as staff for the complex. Lu Hongxu, a 25-year-old law graduate who makes her living guiding people around the site, says Chow Yun-fat is the most famous thesp she's spotted on the base.

The regular employment of 2,000 townspeople is some consolation for the expropriation of their farmland, on which the government built the facility. Just outside the complex, serious high-end homes are going up, including a Netherlands-themed development, replete with a windmill.

And in June, Huairou will open a five-star hotel; in fact, June is the base's official opening, although it's already in use.

Traditionally, post-production on films shot in China has gone to Hong Kong, Australia or to the U.S., but the operators of the base are determined to keep that aspect of the business at Huairou, and are investing heavily to do so. This includes spending $240 million on a "producer headquarters base."

"In the future, we want to get more projects, and we will further train the locals," Zhang says. "This is a studio for producers, with services (ranging all the way) from development to post-production."

And on sound stage 7, there's a replica of a jungle that's not used for films, but rather serves as an indication of how conscious those at Huairou are of tapping into every possible revenue stream for the studio.

The jungle is meant to attract tourists to Huairou's theme park.

Here are the threads on MoTC and LtBF

[GeneChing]

More grist for the mill...

Hollywood looks to China
Hong Kong
April 8, 2012

Kung Fu Panda raked in an estimated $US630 million, with $US26 million from the Chinese mainland alone.

China's booming movie industry is attracting interest from Hollywood heavyweights, as they chase bigger box-office returns to offset tighter margins at home.

Films with Asian and especially Chinese themes are becoming more prominent after Hollywood hit a 16-year low in movie tickets sales last year, while some of its biggest studios are setting up shop in the country.

DreamWorks Animation is setting up a China base while Legendary, the studio behind Christopher Nolan's wildly successful Batman series as well as Clash of the Titans and The Hangover franchises, is also developing a venture.

Keanu Reeves is making his directorial debut with Man of Tai Chi which is currently filming in China and Hong Kong, while Aamir Khan's Bollywood comedy drama 3 Idiots is in talks for a Hollywood remake.

"It's a hugely interesting time now," said executive producer Tracey Trench, whose projects have included Just Married and Ever After.

"The United States is still the biggest market. Within the next 10 years, we are not going to be the biggest market place, everything is going to change," she told a forum at the Hong Kong International Film and Television Market (FILMART) in March.

China's rapidly expanding film industry continues to break new ground and set new records, collecting an estimated 13.1 billion yuan ($A2.01 billion) in 2011 - up by around 30 per cent on-year.

Around 2500 more cinema screens are expected to be unveiled across the country in 2012, with its market now the third largest behind Japan and the United States.

This compares with a clear slowdown in North America.

The Motion Picture Association (MPA) says box office takings from 2007 to 2011 in the United States and Canada grew only 6.3 per cent to $US10.2 billion ($A9.97 billion), while the Asia-Pacific region saw 38 per cent growth to $US9 billion.

Zhang Yimou's The Flowers of War was China's biggest box office smash of the past 12 months, starring Oscar-winning American actor Christian Bale.

It collected around $US90 million from the Chinese box office while picking up a nomination for best foreign language film at the Golden Globes in the United States.

It comes as Hollywood looks to increasingly give a Chinese angle to its output.

"There are so many stories that you can tell and right now China is hot, so many people want to know more," said screenwriter Glenn Berger, who wrote the popular 2008 animated Hollywood comedy Kung Fu Panda and its 2011 sequel.

A box-office hit in China, the film told the story of Po, an oversize and unfit panda who dreams of becoming a martial arts hero. But Berger said the movie was never really about China or kung fu.

"We were just trying to tell a classic underdog story, not particularly a Chinese story," he said of the film.

"But it was very well received in the Chinese market because they thought it was very respectful of Chinese culture," he said.

Kung Fu Panda raked in an estimated $US630 million, with $US26 million from the Chinese mainland alone.

Hong Kong's FILMART exhibition is Asia's major entertainment industry market and one of the top three events of its kind in the world.

This year it attracted a record 648 exhibitors and more than 5700 buyers, up 14 per cent from last year. The US pavilion had over 40 US exhibitors, or about 25 per cent more than last year.

Industry veterans say Chinese audiences are particularly drawn to movies that include Chinese references or elements of Chinese culture.

"People want to feel connected," said Chinese American writer Rita Hsiao, who wrote the screenplay for Toy Story 2 and 1998 animated musical Mulan, a story about a legendary Chinese girl-warrior.

"If you have that universal message and it's interesting, everybody everywhere can connect with it," she said.

One of the main obstacles for foreign filmmakers wanting to crack the Chinese market is a law limiting the number of international films that can be screened in the country to just 20 a year.

It forces studios to co-produce films with Chinese partners or risk having their films blocked at the border.

But all the pandas in the world won't guarantee a hit in China.

"It has to succeed on all the fundamentals of a movie, not just because it is shot in China," Berger said.