Chollywood rising

[GeneChing]

How China Captured Hollywood


A giant statue from 'Kong: Skull Island' movie displayed in Guangzhou, China in 2017. (Anadolu Agency / Getty)
FEBRUARY 8, 2022

In the weeks following the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, a group of Chinese executives traveled to Los Angeles for a crash course in influence. Inside the UCLA classroom of the film professor Robert Rosen, a parade of Hollywood executives conducted a series of lectures on America’s entertainment industry. The students had been chosen by their country’s State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television, and they were in Los Angeles with a mandate: to learn how the American film industry had achieved its status as the leader in global culture—and how China could re-create that achievement back home.

The head of Universal Pictures, the studio behind Frankenstein, Back to the Future, and The Fast and the Furious, spoke about his film operation, a conglomerate grown out of a collection of nickelodeons founded in 1912. So did the CEO of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, a company that was established before the talkie and eventually produced The Wizard of Oz, West Side Story, and The Silence of the Lambs. An agent at William Morris, the talent agency that counts Matt Damon and Denzel Washington as clients, talked about how he managed America’s biggest movie stars. An independent producer explained the art of putting a movie’s finances together, and the head of the Motion Picture Association of America detailed his organization’s lobbying work in Washington on behalf of the nation’s entertainers. It was hard to imagine a more glamorous set of day jobs, positions that turned the men and women who held them into stewards and emissaries of American culture.


This piece is excerpted from Schwartzel’s recent book.
That China would send officials to Los Angeles to learn from America’s most famous capitalist enterprise would have been unthinkable in prior decades, when the Cultural Revolution and the massacre of protesters at Tiananmen Square left little doubt about the government’s attitude toward free expression. Yet China in 2008 was ascendant, even if that rise occurred out of view of many Americans—including many in Hollywood, where the country’s work was just beginning. At the time, the Chinese visitors’ unassuming exterior masked incredible power. One young executive worked at a movie channel that had 800 million viewers, a scale beyond what any of his Hollywood instructors could fathom.

In a matter of years, the positioning of the two parties in that classroom—the Chinese as students and the Hollywood executives as teachers—would seem both prescient and absurd, the dynamic soon to reverse, with Hollywood looking to China for help.

Consider the future of the entities represented in that classroom alone. Within a decade of those classes, Universal would complete a $500 million financing deal with a Chinese firm, cast Chinese actresses in its biggest movies, and construct a Universal theme park near Beijing. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer would shop itself for a Chinese takeover and censor James Bond movies to make sure Chinese citizens never looked weak when matched against England’s ageless secret agent. William Morris would open an office in China to help the country’s new class of A-listers win over global audiences. Producers would rewrite scripts, trading New York for Shanghai if it meant getting a movie financed by Chinese billionaires. The MPAA and other officials in Washington would do anything they could to maintain access to the fast-growing Chinese box office as domestic moviegoing flatlined.

Chinese theaters were largely closed off to the world until 1994, when Hollywood studios were allowed to export 10 movies a year to the country. At the time, $3 million represented a record-setting gross in China. Even when those Chinese students arrived at UCLA, the market was growing but still a bundle of optimistic projections. By 2020, though, China had become the No. 1 box-office market in the world, home to grosses that routinely neared $1 billion—a market that became too big to ignore and too lucrative to anger. Through it all, China would continue to see Hollywood much as those early visitors did: as the ultimate template for building a show business that helped fuel a country’s rise, their goal a 21st-century sequel to what America’s entertainers had done for their country over the course of 100 years.

Ijoined the los angeles bureau of The Wall Street Journal in the summer of 2013, hired to be a fresh set of eyes on the Journal’s Hollywood coverage, and I soon started seeing China everywhere I looked.

One announcement followed another: The Chinese star Fan Bingbing had been cast in the new X-Men. An American theater chain headquartered in Leawood, Kansas, was trading on Wall Street thanks to financing from China’s richest man. Paramount Pictures was rushing to edit World War Z to remove a scene implying that a zombie outbreak had originated in China. Seemingly every producer in town was shopping a script based on the Flying Tigers, the World War II pilots who helped defend China against Japan. Moviegoers in the eastern Chinese city of Qingdao were flocking to see the latest Transformers, sending millions of dollars in unexpected grosses back to its studio on Melrose Avenue.

To many observers, this was another round of “dumb money” flowing into Hollywood, long an industry capable of wooing investors with stardust. When I learned that a government agenda out of Beijing was actually backing the efforts—an agenda clear for anyone to see—I realized that this would not be a case of fleeting interest.

China’s economic leverage had quickly translated into political sway, most often in the censorship practiced by Beijing bureaucrats. Unbeknownst to most moviegoers, studios were removing scenes and dialogue from scripts and finished movies to appease Chinese censors—scrubbing any production of plot points that brushed up against sensitive Chinese history or made the country look anything less than a modern, sophisticated world power. Even more disturbing than the movies being changed were the ones not getting made at all, for fear of angering Chinese officials. Hollywood became a commercial arm for China’s new ambition, and piece by piece, China’s interest in the American film industry revealed itself to be a complement to its political ascendance, one that is rewriting the global order of the new century.

continued next post

[GeneChing]

The story of this unexpected relationship can be told in three acts. It begins with the founding of Hollywood itself, an industry of workaday seamstresses and actors that transformed into a powerhouse that pulled the world toward the United States. Hollywood became America’s No. 1 export, shipping the swagger of John Wayne, the resistance heroes of Star Wars, and the romantic sweep of Titanic around the world. For politicians, the movies became a vehicle of influence—especially so in China, which began to permit Hollywood films into its theaters in the 1990s as part of a broader modernizing effort. Economics bested Communist Party instincts to hide dangerous thoughts from its people, generating box-office grosses that would prove indispensable to American studio executives.

The second act is the collision that followed, a decade during which Hollywood vulnerabilities met Chinese ambition. Out of nowhere appeared a market with 1.4 billion potential customers—a population of spenders that one Hollywood executive described to me as “a great national resource.” Accessing that resource would require bowing to censorship demands and navigating political land mines to build a theme park or secure Chinese financing. Throughout this period, Chinese producers and politicians maintained the student-teacher relationship evident in that UCLA classroom, turning to Hollywood experts for help building a commercial film industry of their own, one that transformed the theatrical propaganda of previous generations into popcorn entertainment.

The third act focuses the spotlight on China, where President Xi Jinping presides over a movie industry that has become an essential arm of a recast Middle Kingdom, a business modeled after America’s but molded to account for the Communist Party’s expectation that art will serve the state. The filmography of China in recent years has given its audiences what Americans have taken for granted: stories about people who look like them, who work and play in a country claiming a moment in history. Now China is trying to complete the hardest piece of the puzzle: shipping those movies overseas—and with them the values and vision that they embody and the alternative mode of governance to Western liberal democracy that they promote. As China redraws the geopolitical alignments of the world, it wants to use its movies to redraw the cultural borders atop them.


Paramount Pictures / Sunset Boulevard / Corbis / Getty
The arc of china’s influence is evident in a single Hollywood franchise, Top Gun, in which the geopolitical tensions of the next century came to be reflected in a two-inch patch sewn onto a movie star’s costume.

The original 1986 film is a hallmark of Ronald Reagan’s America—Tom Cruise as the aviator-wearing daredevil Maverick, Berlin’s “Take My Breath Away,” the hero declaring, “I feel the need …” In a sign of how deeply the film saw itself as a celebration of the U.S. Navy, producers asked the military to cooperate on the picture and acceded to its wishes to make the movie a robust demonstration of American military might. They scrapped a scene involving a crash and turned Maverick’s love interest, originally a fellow Navy member, into a contractor so audiences didn’t see the hero breaking rules about relationships among personnel. Moviegoers didn’t mind the jingoism; they wanted to watch their country’s naval aviators pull off awesome stunts and save the day. Top Gun grossed $177 million in North America, more than any other movie released that year. It also did what years of state-produced recruitment videos could not, boosting young men and women’s interest in joining the armed forces. Recruiters waited in theater lobbies to catch moviegoers on their way out of the film. (Ray-Ban sales shot up too.)

In 2017, Paramount Pictures announced that it would reboot Top Gun with its original star, another example of Hollywood’s effective strategy of bathing audiences in nostalgia. But much about the global film market had changed in the intervening years. Top Gun: Maverick, as the sequel would be called, was so expensive that studio chiefs approved its production with accounting projections that assumed its global gross would include Chinese ticket sales. What’s more, some of that $150 million budget came courtesy of Skydance Media, a Los Angeles film and TV company partially financed by Tencent, the Chinese tech firm behind China’s most popular messaging app. Chinese money was backing the new Top Gun in two ways: in financing behind the scenes and in expected box-office grosses once it hit theaters there.

This all explains what happened to Tom Cruise’s jacket. In the original film, Maverick’s bomber featured a patch that highlighted the U.S.S. Galveston’s tour of Japan, Taiwan, and other countries in the Pacific, with flags from those countries below his collar. Chinese investors on the new movie pointed out to Skydance executives that those 1986 patches now posed a problem: China has long argued that Taiwan—a self-ruling island off the coast of the mainland—is a renegade province, and has insisted that it will be reintegrated into China. Having a global movie star flaunt Taiwan’s flag on his back undermined Chinese sovereignty. And given China’s decades-long animosity toward Japan, the studio executives reasoned that they should play it safe and erase that patch too.

When Paramount unveiled the poster for Top Gun: Maverick in the summer of 2019, it showed Cruise from the back, his signature brown leather jacket in focus and the flags of Taiwan and Japan—U.S. allies in real life—removed. Chinese officials did not even have to weigh in. By 2019, Hollywood had so fully absorbed Beijing’s political preferences that such decisions were made by teams in Los Angeles months, or even years, before Chinese officials would weigh in. If it could help Paramount executives make their case to Chinese censors that Top Gun should show in Chinese theaters, Maverick’s bomber would adhere to the One China policy.

What happened between the two Top Guns is a story with implications that stretch far beyond the entertainment industry. Hollywood’s experience has served as a precursor for numerous American industries and companies trying to do business in China, including Apple and the National Basketball Association. In the months following the coronavirus outbreak, China’s economic recovery proved a financial salvation for struggling companies across numerous sectors, further boosting the country’s leverage.

China’s omnipresence onscreen reflects the country’s increasing ubiquity in business and in other parts of the world. That ubiquity has also exported a worldwide fear of crossing China. These concerns only grew as tensions between the U.S. and China escalated during Donald Trump’s administration and Xi’s aggressive crackdown on dissent. As China loomed large in the collective imagination, the lives and experiences of individual Chinese citizens were lost in many sweeping geopolitical analyses. Those deeply involved in Hollywood’s economic relationship with China grew quiet too, worried not only about losing their business but also about graver consequences: being called in for questioning, getting thrown out of the country, disappearing.

In early 2020, I had lunch at a vegan restaurant blocks from Warner Bros. with an executive who worked in China. Before we could begin talking, she turned off her cellphone and put it in her purse underneath the table. When that didn’t assuage her fears, she took her purse to the other side of the restaurant and asked the staff to keep it behind the counter. She then wondered if she should go put it in her car, because she’d heard that the Chinese government could surveil a conversation even from across the room. Chinese paranoia had infiltrated Burbank.

By pressuring Hollywood and its own entertainment industry, China could displace the American film industry as the chief narrator of the 21st century. Hollywood, by maintaining warm relations with the regime, has bolstered China’s campaign for global influence with American movies that either turn every portrayal of the country into a state-sanctioned commercial or avoid anything that challenges how Xi’s party sees the world.

In some cases, the rise of China’s entertainment industry has deepened our understanding of a country and culture that remain misunderstood, even demonized. In more insidious cases, it has braided a censorious agenda into moviemaking, corrupting America’s most effective tool for selling democracy and free expression to the world. Over this next century, China wants to use the movies to rebrand itself, and it has learned how to do so from the best. All of this has happened before our very eyes.

More on Red Carpet here.

[GeneChing]

More on Hi, Mom here

Sony Lands Remake Rights to China Box Office Smash ‘Hi, Mom’ (EXCLUSIVE)

By Patrick Frater

Beijing Culture, CAA.

Sony Pictures has acquired the English-language remake rights to Chinese comedy drama, “Hi, Mom,” which until recently overtaken by “Barbie” had been the world’s highest grossing film directed by a solo female.

The original picture, directed by Jia Ling and released in early 2021, sees a young woman whose mother has been fatally injured in a car accident, travel back to the early 1980s where she becomes best friend to the younger version of her mother. That enables her to work on giving her mother a better life than first time around.

Variety‘s review of the picture said it had an “inspired storytelling switch” and was “a top-notch tearjerker that will have viewers everywhere reaching for the tissues.”

Laura Kosann is in the early stages of development, and is adapting the screenplay with Escape Artists’ Todd Black, Jason Blumenthal, Steve Tisch and Becky Sanderman producing along with Wenxin She (“A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood”). Jia is also attached as executive producer.

Repped by CAA, Kosann is a 2021 Academy Nicholl Fellow and has had three features on the annual Black List in the past two years. She is adapting the comic book “Mercy Sparx” for MGM and The Picture Company as well as rewriting a live-action Christmas musical entitled “Santa is Real” for Amazon.

“I am looking forward to this cooperation and I am so glad that my story with my mom can be shared with more people. I believe that while everyone’s story with their mom is unique, the love in these stories is universal and something we can all resonate with,” Jia said.

The original story, known in Chinese as “Hello, Li Huanying,” Jia’s late mother’s real name, was developed by Jia from a comedy sketch of the same name that she wrote in 2016. Production of the feature began in 2019 with production by Beijing Jingxi Culture.

Jia co-starred as the young woman, while Zhang Xiaofei played the younger version of her mother.
“Hi, Mom” was released in February 2021, timed to coincide with the Chinese New Year peak box office season, and grossed RMB5.41 billion (some $841 million at current exchange rates), making it the third highest performing film of all time in China.

The film likely benefitted from the empathy of many audiences separated from their own families by COVID restrictions. But it also scored highly on audience ratings charts and earned screenplay and directing awards for Jia and multiple acting awards for Zhang.

[GeneChing]

Why Hollywood’s China Syndrome Is Both Meltdown and Opportunity
Variety
PATRICK FRATER
December 21, 2023 at 4:45 AM



It seems Hollywood’s “sequel-itis” has reached China’s box office too.

Despite the country’s dramatic overnight removal of COVID restrictions in December 2022 and film imports quickly restarting with the triumphant debut of “Avatar: The Way of Water,” Hollywood’s new normal in the Middle Kingdom bears little resemblance to its pre-pandemic status.

During the three-year disruption of 2020-22, caused by the pandemic and soured U.S.-China diplomatic relations, few Hollywood films — and no Marvel titles — made their way onto Chinese screens.

But if Hollywood studios read the $240 million-grossing “Avatar 2” feeding frenzy as a sign that pent-up Chinese demand for their sequels and superheroes slate might continue throughout 2023, they were sorely disappointed.

In the world’s second-largest box office territory, with a cume to date of $7.3 billion, the market share for all imported films in China has crashed, standing at less than 15% at the beginning of December. Hollywood films’ share is just 12%, consultancy Artisan Gateway calculates.

This month, “Napoleon” and “Wonka” have continued the trend of dismal flops, with $5 million and $3 million opening weekends, respectively.

The slump is particularly disappointing given that the Chinese authorities that carefully control the film industry have this year made several moves designed to put Hollywood releasing back on the rails. Along with reopening the import spigot, they’ve reduced their blackout periods (seasons when only new Chinese titles get releases), sped up the approvals process to allow longer marketing lead times, and allowed release dates in China to be synchronized with those of U.S. and international outings.

To no avail. Chinese audiences have seemingly moved on from American franchises and Tom Cruise-style individualism.

“I grew up watching every possible Hollywood film,” says Yang Xianghua, president of movies at Chinese streaming giant iQiyi. “Now, not so much.”

The waning power of Hollywood’s franchises is not a problem unique to China. But the scale and proficiency of the local competition is.

The Chinese government has corralled billions of dollars into creating a technically adept production sector, and top directors are being pressured to deliver “main melody,” or patriotic, movies.

Within these guardrails, new genres have flourished, including formerly taboo sci-fi films (such as “The Wandering Earth II,” which this year earned $570 million) and crime stories with Chinese characteristics (“No More Bets,” which grossed $544 million). That said, the year’s biggest film is the $645 million-grossing costume drama “Full River Red,” by veteran director Zhang Yimou, albeit one stuffed with allegories for contemporary audiences.

“Many popular local films are adapted from true stories or from ordinary people’s lives, relatable to real life. Also, the recent rise of crime/suspense dramas feature unpredictable and clever storytelling that keep the audience guessing and interested. Story endings are hard to predict, sometimes a surprise, and become hot topics for people to discuss. Hollywood sequels have become predicable from beginning to the end,” says Artisan Gateway principal Rance Pow.

Infrastructure, too, increasingly favors Chinese content. Streamers have been weaned off imported content by intrusive vetting and censorship processes. And the government has directed the building of nearly 100,000 cinemas. As venues reach into smaller cities, so the audience interest in foreign stars and stories diminishes.

According to China’s latest annual film yearbook, many Chinese viewers consider local films to have improved in quality in recent years. At the same time, 25% think that imported films have run out of ideas.

“Chinese moviegoers are showing declining interest in works focused on superheroes. While these films historically performed well in Mainland China, only ‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3’ stood out this year,” said a spokesman for Chinese ticketing, data and distribution firm Maoyan.

Yet the more creative end of Hollywood’s spectrum still has plenty of potential.

“Chinese filmmakers have learned how to do big blockbusters with special effects, but they are still limited — only in part by censorship — when it comes to storytelling,” says Stanley Rosen, a professor of political science and international relations at USC. He points to the bright feminism of “Barbie” ($35 million box office in China) and the nuclear debate raised in “Oppenheimer” ($65 million) as examples of storytelling concepts that are still beyond what is open to Chinese filmmakers.

Still, American studios would be unwise to pander to Chinese audiences any time soon. U.S. Rep. Mike Gallagher’s Select Committee on the CCP proceedings seem determined to prevent Hollywood from amending scripts or otherwise appealing to Chinese political sensibilities. And so, the gap between U.S. output and Chinese audiences may persist.

But China may now be offering Hollywood another opening. Industry sources have told Variety that the import quota for revenue-sharing films — the system by which Chinese authorities control how many and which foreign films come into the country, currently set at 34 films per year — has quietly been dropped. Box office consultancy Gower Street Analytics calculates that the number may already have surpassed 37 this year.

The apparent thinking is that Hollywood is no longer a threat to the local film industry and that the removal of quotas would ease an ongoing trade dispute and further stimulate the Chinese box office.

“China has used quotas both as a sword and a shield. In the early days, they were a shield to keep the local industry protected so that they weren’t overwhelmed by the very popular Hollywood films, while still getting the benefit of those films to be able to build their cinemas. Now they’re not that concerned anymore about the competition,” says Jean Prewitt, president and CEO at the Independent Film & Television Alliance, which represents film companies outside the Hollywood system. She says that neither U.S. studios nor independents were aware of any change to the quota regime.

Even if the quotas don’t crumble, China still wants to boost box office revenue.

In recent months, it has begun testing a “segmented” or “branch distribution” system that introduces a modicum of market forces. It permits exhibitors and private sector distributors, rather than a state-owned enterprise, to be responsible for bringing in and releasing imported titles. So far, the system has only been tried for minor rereleases.

The Dec. 22 reissue of “La La Land” will be its highest-profile usage. And “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour,” now set for a Dec. 31 outing, may be the first for a current title.

“They are desperate to bring in this non-studio title which will play premium large-format venues,” says one China-focused U.S. executive. “It seems that the Chinese government can still pull whatever lever it wants to engineer the desired marketplace result.”

And with China’s box office still below 2019 levels, there’s every reason to expect that behind-the-scenes levers will continue to be pulled. Some things don’t change.

Is Marvel still in the game here with Superhero Fatigue?

[GeneChing]

Jan 3, 2024 12:01am PT
China Box Office Surges by Annual 83% in 2023 to $7.73 Billion
Recovery after COVID year was dramatic, but imported films fared no better than in 2022.

By Patrick Frater


Courtesy of Edko Films

Chinese-produced movies took all of the top ten chart places at the China box office as theatrical revenues in 2023 rebounded strongly. Gross revenues reached an annual total of RMB54.9 billion or $7.73 billion.

That was an 83% improvement on the previous year, according to data from China Film Administration, but still 14.5% adrift of 2019, the last pre-COVID year, when grosses hit RMB64.3 billion. The government body also said that 2023 was the fourth highest box office figure on record.

Comparisons with 2022 are less meaningful than in many other countries as China suffered the worst of the pandemic in that year and cinemas were subject to eight months of rolling closures and capacity restrictions. In 2020 and 2021, when much of the world was laboring under COVID restrictions, but China was operating largely normally, the Middle Kingdom was the biggest movie market on the planet.

Local ticketing firm Maoyan reported that the number of admissions in 2023 was the highest in four years, at 1.3 billion. That is fractionally below one cinema visit per person in the massive country.

Although the market was largely re-opened to imported titles, Chinese-made films accounted for an 84% share of the total box office market, according to consultancy firm Artisan Gateway. Imports accounted for 16%. The proportions were little changed from the more restricted 2022.

“Fast X,” with RMB985 million or $139 million, was the top-scoring imported movie. It was followed in that category by two Japanese animation titles “Suzume” (with $114 million) and “The First Slam Dunk” ($93 million).

Two locally-produced films released at Chinese New Year, “Full River Red” and “The Wandering Earth 2,” headed the annual chart and exceeded the RMB4 billion ($560 million) landmark.

Maoyan said that recovery in 2023 was propelled by expansion of cinema operations into smaller towns and cities and rural areas, a growing trend of parent-child moviegoing, and changing demographics, notably an expanded female audience aged 25 and above.

The health of the cinema exhibition sector remains in some question. China Film Administration reports that the country had 86,300 cinema screens in operation at the end of 2023. That compares with 69,800 in 2019, when box office was higher. Per screen average revenues, then have dropped from a mean RMB921,000 ($129,000) per year to RMB63,600 ($89,000).

“The [Chinese] film market experienced changes in terms of content, audience, and promotion. Diversified films were welcomed by the market, with hits in the genres of history, sci-fi and fantasy. Young audiences sought new content and new topics. Male audiences were the main audience for imported animation films, while female audiences tended to choose parent-child animation and films focusing on women’s issues. Young audiences were more inclined to pay for films with creative settings and novel topics,” said Maoyan.

The agency also underlined the market’s growing seasonality and event-driven performance. “The demand for family [films] exploded during holidays and festivals, which was much higher than the average. In 2023, the summer season box office was the strongest in history, contributing nearly 40% of the year’s box office, while the Spring Festival holidays box office ranked second with a 12.3% contribution,” it said.

Wonder how the upcoming Spring Festival will do...

[GeneChing]

Mar 13, 2022 8:28pm PT
China Box Office Slips to Lowest Weekend of the Year as COVID Resurfaces

By Patrick Frater

©Raymond Depardon / Magnum Photo
Mainland China’s theatrical box office slipped to its lowest weekend total of the year as the market suffered a combination of rising COVID cases and a lack of new releases.

Nationwide box office between Friday and Sunday amounted to just $19.2 million, according to data from consultancy Artisan Gateway. It was the fifth weekend of decline since the splashy opening of eight major titles on Feb. 1 for the Lunar New Year holidays.

“The Battle at Lake Changjin II,” which dominated proceedings at New Year, remained at the top of the chart for the sixth consecutive weekend. It earned a lowly $4.6 million over three days for a cumulative total of $635 million.

Recent days have witnessed a surge in coronavirus cases in China that has caused the return of restrictions in major cities including Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen as well as epicenters Jilin and Changchun in the Northeast.

On Sunday, mainland authorities reported a total of 3,100 new locally transmitted cases of the disease in people who have symptoms and those who do not (China’s official count does not include asymptomatic cases as confirmed) and started to allow the results of rapid antigen tests in its data set. These are the highest daily figures in China in two years.

China is operating a zero-COVID policy which entails largely closed borders, mass vaccination and localized lockdowns. Mainland China has reported 112,000 infections since the beginning of the outbreak in January 2020 and 4,635 deaths. Some 1.24 billion people have received at least one vaccination shot.

It has been reported locally that some cinemas in Shanghai and Shenzhen were closed in response to the latest spikes. But a nationwide closure of movie theaters, like the five and a half month disruption in 2020, has so far been avoided.

Another factor in the slumping box office is likely to be a continuing shortage of major new films. The weekend’s highest new entry was the fourth-placed “Do You Love Me As I Love You?”. The film is a Taiwan-produced romance that released in other Chinese-speaking parts of Asia in the third quarter of 2020.

Monday sees the release in China of “Uncharted,” timed to give it a shot at the one day Qingming festival. And, if COVID conditions do not cause widespread cinema closures, Friday will see the release of “The Batman.”

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[GeneChing]

Maybe The Batman won't dethrone TB@LC2...

‘The Batman’ Headed for Weak China Opening Amid COVID Outbreak, Cinema Closures
Amid fraught geopolitics and virus-related release challenges, Hollywood studio films are earning a fraction of past China grosses.

BY PATRICK BRZESKI, KAREN CHU
MARCH 15, 2022 8:27PM

The Batman COURTESY OF WARNER BROS. PICTURES™ & DC COMICS
Hollywood can’t seem to catch a break in China lately. Just as U.S. studio tentpoles were beginning to return to the country at scale, a COVID outbreak spanning two thirds of China’s provinces is shuttering cinemas and casting a pall over local consumer activity all over again.

Approximately 30 percent of all Chinese movie theaters have been temporarily closed over the past week, according to exhibition industry consultancy Artisan Gateway. The regions hardest hit include major population centers like Shanghai and Shenzhen.

Locally transmitted COVID cases rose on Tuesday by more than 5,000 new infections nationwide. While low by Western standards, the current outbreak represents China’s largest caseload since the pandemic first emerged in Wuhan in 2020. Local officials are scrambling to maintain their “COVID zero” policy of total eradication of the virus, resorting to their usual playbook of mass mandatory testing and the total shutdown of cities comprising tens of millions of residents.

If Beijing leaders fail to get a handle on the infection surge soon, economists warn that China’s growing response could result in major supply chain snarls in the world’s manufacturing base, further jeopardizing the global economic recovery.

Within the movie sector, box office analysts had been looking forward to the China release of Warner Bros’ The Batman on Friday for some indication of the country’s current appetite for U.S. superhero fare. A source close to the film, however, tells The Hollywood Reporter that the latest tracking suggests an opening of just $15 million to $20 million, down from earlier projections in the $25 million to $30 million range.

“Our optimistic assessment is that Warners will be lucky if The Batman opens above RMB 100 million ($15.7 million),” adds James Li, co-founder of Beijing-based film industry market research firm Fanink, which has been tracking the title. “On the pessimistic side, they may be lucky to get half that,” he says. “There are four tier-one cities in China (Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen), and these are the major markets where moviegoers tend to be the most pro-Hollywood — and half of them are currently shut down.”

Domestically, The Batman has earned $245 million, with the worldwide total sitting at about $472 million.

Director Matt Reeves’ take on Gotham’s dark knight is somber in tone and runs nearly three hours long, hence the rather modest original sales expectations. But the film will be the first U.S. superhero movie to open in China in nearly a year and half, after local regulators passed on the release of the last five Marvel tentpoles (Black Widow, Eternals, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Venom: Let There Be Carnage and Spider-Man: No Way Home) due to suspected political reasons. Hopes were high that The Batman might give the studios some hint of their former glory in the massive China market.

Sony and Tom Holland’s Uncharted is similarly struggling in China amid the theater closures and diminished interest in U.S. moviemaking. The action adventure film has earned $114 million in North America and $302 million worldwide so far. But it has brought in just $4.5 million in China since its opening on Monday and local ticketing app Maoyan projects it to finish locally with just $13.2 million.

Chinese consumers’ declining enthusiasm for U.S. moviemaking is becoming increasingly unmistakable. After a decade of pulling in enormous blockbuster grosses from China, the only Hollywood films to earn over $100 million in the country in the past two years plus were Legendary Entertainment’s Godzilla Versus Kong and Universal’s F9: The Fast Saga. Meanwhile, more than 20 Chinese titles have sailed past the $100 million mark during that same period, and the very biggest local blockbusters have earned more than $500 million a piece.

Other upcoming Hollywood titles headed to China in the weeks ahead include Roland Emmerich’s disaster action film Moonfall (March 25), Sony’s animation sequel Hotel Transylvania: Transformania (April 3) and Warner Bros’ Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore (April 8).

“Over the past two years, the Hollywood brand has definitely taken a hit in China — for a variety of reasons related to supply, the actions of authorities and local market dynamics,” says Li. “It’s going to take some time and strong marketing effort to re-engage Chinese consumers around the Hollywood brand.”

There is some concern in the mainland Chinese industry that the plight of neighboring Hong Kong could foreshadow what’s to come if health officials aren’t able to tamp down the current COVID outbreak soon.

The omicron variant arrived in Hong Kong near the start of the year and local cinemas were closed on January 7 as infection caseloads skyrocketed. The suspension came on the heels of a strong box-office recovery in the semi-autonomous city, with Spider-Man: No Way Home taking more than $14 million in just two weeks in December 2021. A month after cinemas were ordered to suspend business, two major multiplexes – Broadway Hollywood and Cinema City Victoria – announced their permanent closure as their leases ended. Although the box office returns in Hong Kong in 2021 showed 125 percent growth compared to 2020, from $69 million to $155 million in total sales, the latest outbreak has decimated the local exhibition business. The theater industry missed out on the lucrative Lunar New Year holiday season in February, and the Hong Kong releases of West Side Story, Death on the Nile and The Batman, originally scheduled for January, February and March 2022, respectively, were all scrapped. The local government has indicated that reopening theaters won’t be considered until at least April 20.

Pamela McClintock contributed to this report.

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[GeneChing]

China Box Office: ‘Fantastic Beasts 3’ Opens to $10M Amid Mass Cinema Shutdowns
Approximately 54 percent of Chinese movie theaters are currently closed as the country battles local COVID outbreaks.

BY PATRICK BRZESKI

APRIL 10, 2022 10:41PM

COURTESY OF WARNER BROS. PICTURES

Warner Bros.’ Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore cruised to an easy win during its opening weekend in China, but the prize was smaller than usual.

The Harry Potter spinoff sequel earned just $9.7 million, according to data from Artisan Gateway. Thanks to ongoing COVID-19 outbreaks, an estimated 54 percent of China’s cinemas are currently closed.

The first Fantastic Beasts film opened to $40.4 million in China in 2016, and the sequel, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, debuted to $36.6 million in 2018.

Social scores for the Secrets of Dumbledore were solid, if unexceptional: 8.7 on Maoyan, 8.7 from Alibaba’s Taopiaopiao and 6.7 on Douban.

The film performed somewhat better on Imax, earning $1.5 million in the giant-screen format, or 15 percent of its nationwide total. Dumbledore played on 360 Imax screens, roughly half of Imax’s usual outlay.

In recent months and years, Hollywood titles have been earning conspicuously less than they once did in China, but the current COVID closures make it difficult to assess whether the general trend of waning local enthusiasm for U.S. movies was also a factor in Dumbledore’s lackluster opening.

Sony’s animated sequel Hotel Transylvania 4 earned just $1.4 million in its second weekend for a running total of $6.2 million. Hotel Transylvania 3 (2018) earned $32.2 million in China.

Other U.S.-made titles added similarly tiny sums. Escape Room 2, in cinemas for its second weekend, added $940,000, taking its total to $5.2 million. Roland Emmerich’s Moonfall, which was co-financed by Chinese studio Huayi Brothers Media, added $900,000. The film has earned $19.4 million since its local release late last month — slightly better than its $19.1 million North American total.

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[GeneChing]

May 17, 2022 8:00pm PT
India Takes Over the Cannes Market as Chinese Executives Are Stuck at Home
By Naman Ramachandran, Patrick Frater

L'Oreal

India is the country of honor at the Cannes Film Market and consequently a massive contingent from the country is descending upon the Croisette. Variety understands that some 400 attendees are winging their way from India, and that French embassies across the country were working at capacity to issue visas.

That stands in contrast with the attendance from other parts of Asia, further East. Attendance of participants from Hong Kong and China is massively down compared with pre-COVID times. Korean companies are back in respectable numbers, with some attending a physical market outside their home country for the first time in over two years. The solid attendance of Korean executives also reflects the selection of Korean films across multiple sections of the festival.

“I’m very excited to be back in Cannes, it has been three years for us,” said Danny Lee, senior manager at Contents Panda, part of the Next Entertainment World studio. “There are many Korean buyers here too.”

The government-mandated travel restrictions that persist in Hong Kong (compulsory quarantine is down to a week now, having previously been 21 days, but the government maintains an aggressive approach towards airlines that carry passengers later found to be COVID positive) mean that flight conditions and the ability to return home are simply too uncertain for many.

That in turn deprives the Cannes Market of executives from what was previously the hub of Asian sales and film finance — even if that role has been somewhat eroded by the increasing maturity of the mainland Chinese film industry and the prominence of the Korean industry.

Hong Kong companies including Golden Network and Good Move Media are not attending, and will instead attempt to launch films and maintain business relations remotely. Others, including Edko Films and Media Asia, are making the effort and will be present.

“We have a big-budget film ‘Kowloon Walled City’ to sell. Given how difficult it is currently to pre-sell Asian films, we need to talk to people in person,” said Fred Tsui, GM, head of sales and international co-production at Media Asia.

China has limited in- and out-bound travel for months, as it seeks to achieve a COVID-zero policy through lockdowns, mass testing and border controls. This week it imposed its most stringent travel restrictions for decades, banning all but essential overseas travel.

That leaves Cannes without the mainland Chinese companies which, in pre-COVID years, had regularly grabbed headlines. They were not necessarily volume buyers, but were previously involved in large package deals and big-budget co-productions. Other Chinese firms were looking to invest in international IP that could be exploited across multiple media.

The COVID era, however, has coincided with a more generalized slowdown of the Chinese film market and a politically directed retrenchment towards local content. That makes it difficult to quantify China’s loss to Cannes.

But, it is perhaps more than symbolic that Wednesday’s Cannes Market opening party, is this year sponsored by India. China had been its sponsor for several years.

Anurag Thakur, India’s Minister of Information and Broadcasting, will inaugurate the Indian Pavilion in the presence of actor R. Madhavan, whose directorial debut “Rocketry” is premiering at the market; filmmaker Shekhar Kapur; Prasoon Joshi and Vani Tripathi from the Central Board of Film Certification; Grammy-winner Ricky Kej; and a plethora of actors including Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Pooja Hegde, Tamannaah Bhatia and Aditi Rao Hydari.

Bollywood A-lister Akshay Kumar was due to be at the pavilion inauguration, but contracted COVID.

India will be prominently visible throughout the festival this year. Actor Deepika Padukone is on the jury for the main feature film competition. Oscar-winner A.R. Rahman’s directorial debut, “Le Musk,” is premiering at the market’s Cannes XR program. Indian filmmaker Shaunak Sen’s Sundance grand jury prize winning documentary “All That Breathes” is showing as a special screening. And Indian auteur Satyajit Ray’s “The Adversary” (1970) and Aravindan Govindan’s “The Circus Tent” will be screened at the festival’s Cannes Classics strand.

TV star Helly Shah will walk the red carpet for L’Oreal and also promote her film debut “Kaya Palat.” Multihyphenate Kamal Haasan will be present to promote his new film “Vikram.” There will be plenty of first looks unveiled, including for Shyam Benegal’s “Mujib: The Making of a Nation,” the biopic of late Bangladeshi leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, for which top Bangladeshi star Nusrat Imrose Tisha is expected alongside her filmmaker partner Mostofa Sarwar Farooki. Bangladeshi director/producer Abu Shahed Emon is also due at Cannes. First looks are also being unveiled for Pushan Kripalani’s “Goldfish” and Sandeep Singh’s “Safed.”

“When you are a country of honor at the world’s largest film market you are on the radar of the Western world — it could be because of your creativity and international appeal, or maybe because of business potential and mass audience reach. We seem to be better-known for the latter,” said Samir Sarkar, who is co-producing Cannes’ La Fabrique project selection “Starfruits” via his Indo-Singaporean outfit Magic Hour Films.

“As far as our creativity and international appeal goes, it’s time we nurture and support those filmmakers that can take Indian cinema into something more meaningful and successful for world audiences,” Sarkar added.

From Pakistan, Saim Sadiq’s feature debut “Joyland,” produced, among others, by Indian-origin Apoorva Guru Charan, is premiering at the festival’s Un Certain Regard strand.

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[GeneChing]

Aug 28, 2022 9:45pm PT
China Box Office: ‘New Gods: Yang Jian’ Repeats Weekend Win

By Patrick Frater


Courtesy of GKIDS


Chinese animation film “New Gods: Yang Jian” was the top film at the mainland China box office for the second successive weekend.

Unchallenged by major new releases, the film earned $13.0 (RMB88.3 million) between Friday and Sunday, according to data from consultancy firm Artisan Gateway. That was a drop of 34% compared with its $19.8 million opening session.

Some $1.5 million of the weekend total was scored from the film’s outing on Imax screens.

After ten days on release “Yang Jian” has a cumulative total of $43.7 million (RMB297 million). Of that, its Imax total is now $4 million.

“New Gods: Yang Jian” is a continuation of the “New Gods” franchise from Light Chaser Animation, the studio behind 2021 hit “New Gods: Nezha Reborn” and 2019’s “White Snake.” The new film revolves around Yang Jian, a mythological figure from the Ming Dynasty and who was featured in historical novel “The Investiture of the Gods.”

Previous chart topper “Moon Man” was not far behind, but remained in second place. It earned $12.2 million (RMB83.3 million) and now has a cumulative of $421 million (RMB2.86 billion) since releasing on July 29.

“Warriors of Future,” a Hong Kong-produced sci-fi title, earned $7.4 million (RMB50.6 million) in third place over the weekend. Since releasing on Aug. 5, it has now amassed $88.5 million (RMB602 million).

“Minions: The Rise of Gru” earned $6.5 million (RMB44.4 million) in its second weekend, a drop of 44% from its $11.6 million debut. It now has $24.4 million (RMB166 million) from ten days in Chinese theaters.

Overseas media have reported that Chinese authorities changed the film’s ending to show that crime does not pay. Chinese viewers seem to like it well enough. On the Taopiaopiao ticketing platform they gave it a mean 8.8 out of 10 approval rating. On Maoyan the score was 9.0.

The highest-ranking new release film was Japanese animation “Belle” which took 1.5 million (RMB10.4 million) and placed fifth.

With three animated titles in the top five and the chart looking less than fresh, the nationwide box office total over the weekend slipped to $45.6 million. The running total for the year-to-date is now $3.57 billion, some 26% below the equivalent score at the same point in 2021.

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[GeneChing]

Oct 1, 2023 10:36pm PT
Chinese Films Take First, Third and Fifth Places at Global Box Office on Holiday Weekend

By Patrick Frater


Enlight Pictures

A clutch of Chinese movies released for the end of September holiday season dominated the global box office over the latest weekend. Mainland Chinese-produced films took first, third and fifth places across the planet, according to U.S.-based data service Comscore.

Comscore shows “Under the Light,” which released only in mainland China, grossing an estimated $54 million between Friday and Sunday. That put it ahead of Paramount’s “Paw Patrol: The Mighty Movie,” which earned an estimated $23.0 million in the North America (aka ‘domestic’) market and a further $23.1 million in the rest of the world, for a weekend total of $46.1 million.

In third place globally was another Chinese film “The Ex-Files 4: The Marriage Plan,” which released in China and five other territories for a weekend total of $41.4 million. (That included $66,000 from North America.) “The Creator” earned $32.3 million across the planet, comprising an $18.3 million international score and $14 million from North America. Fifth, planetwide, was Chinese propaganda movie “The Volunteers: To the War,” which released in two territories and scored $30.8 million, according to Comscore estimates.

Providing top five China figures considered as definitive, consultancy firm Artisan Gateway, shows that the Middle Kingdom enjoyed one of its five biggest box office weekends this year. Artisan Gateway reports the nationwide aggregate at $168 million, between Friday and Sunday.

The holiday period in China continues over the next several days, combining the moveable feast of Mid Autumn festival with the People’s Republic of China’s National Day holiday that starts on Oct. 1, and for many becomes an eight-day “Golden Week.”

“Under the Light” is a neon-lit drama directed by Zhang Yimou and mark’s Zhang’s second major hit film to be released this year, after “Full River Red,” released at Lunar New Year. “Under the Light,” stretches across multiple themes including crime and anti-corruption efforts, and is reported to be Zhang’s most tightly plotted film in a while. It features a cast of top mainland stars including: Zhang Guoli, Yu Hewei, Joan Chen, Zhou Dongyu, and Lei Jiayin.

Artisan Gateway reports it as earning $55.5 million (RMB393 million) between Friday and Sunday. Including its advanced opening on Thursday, it finished Sunday with a four-day cumulative of $62.6 million (RMB451 million).

Urban romantic comedy, “The Ex-Files 4: The Marriage Plan” also got a Thursday release and grossed $41.4 million (RMB300 million) between Friday and Sunday. Over its four opening days, its total was $54.3 million, for the Huayi Brothers studio.

Imax reported that “Under the Light” earned $3.9 million on its screens in China and that “The Ex-Files 4: The Marriage Plan” enjoyed $1.1 million of its total from its venues.

“The Volunteers,” is the first part of a new trilogy directed by Chen Kaige (director of Palme d’Or winner and double Oscar nominated “Farewell My Concubine”) celebrating the victories of the China’s People’s Volunteer Army during the War to Resist U.S. Aggression and Aid Korea (1950-1953), known in the west as the Korean War. It earned $31 million (RMB223 million) between Friday and Sunday and $34.7 million over four days, according to Artisan Gateway.

The same provider shows comedy actioner “Moscow Mission” releasing on Friday and earning $23.2 million (RMB166 million) in fourth place at the China box office.

“Paw Patrol” proved an exception to the rule that normally bars Hollywood imports from new releases during key Chinese holidays. It released on Friday and earned $5.4 million (RMB38.8 million) in China over its opening three days, Artisan Gateway reports.

The bumper weekend lifted China’s box office for the year-to-date to a total of $6.39 billion. That is some 77% ahead of the COVID-hit 2022 and trails the last pre-COVID, 2019, by only 5%, according to Artisan Gateway.

Looking forward to the new Chen Kaige & Zhang Yimou films.

[GeneChing]

Oct 15, 2023 8:55pm PT
China Box Office: Zhang Yimou’s ‘Under the Light’ Retains Weekend Leadership

By Patrick Frater

Enlight Pictures

A dearth of new release films allowed Zhang Yimou’s “Under the Light” to retain a comfortable lead at the China box office over the weekend, in its third week of release.

The contemporary crime drama film earned $13.5 million (RMB97.2 million) between Friday and Sunday, according to data from consultancy Artisan Gateway. Since releasing on Sept. 28, it has accumulated gross revenues of $163 million (RMB1.17 billion).

Zhang will be feted with a lifetime achievement award in Japan next week, where the Tokyo International Film Festival will play his February record breaker “Full River Red,” but not “Under the Light.”

“The Volunteers: To the War,” a 1950s-set propaganda film directed by Chen Kaige, earned $9.6 million (RMB69.2 million) and rose from third to second place. It now has a cumulative of $93.2 million. Chinese comedy franchise film “The Ex-Files 4: Marriage Plan” took $8.8 million in its third week of release, advancing its cumulative to $123 million.

“Moscow Mission” was close behind, with $8.4 million. That extended its three-weekend cumulative total to $76.3 million. “Lose to Win,” another holiday season release, earned $2.2 million in its third weekend. Since debuting on Sept. 28, it has accumulated $21.1 million.

After a strong summer season that helped overall box office numbers in China to recover most of their pre-COVID might, a familiar pattern of seasonality and holiday-driven releasing appears to be re-emerging in the Middle Kingdom. National Geographic documentary “Jane,” about naturalist Jane Goodall, is due a release in the coming days, but the next major Hollywood tentpole to arrive in China is “The Marvels,” on Nov. 10.

The latest weekend saw aggregate nationwide grosses of $47.1 million, propelling the year-to-date total to $6.71 billion. Artisan Gateway calculates that as 76% ahead of COVID-struck 2022, and 10% behind the same point in 2019.

Do I need to make a 'Under the Light' thread?

[GeneChing]

Feb 7, 2024 2:00am PT
China Box Office Preview: Can 8 Films Deliver a $1 Billion Lunar New Year Sequel?
Zhang Yimou, Han Han, Jia Ling and Ning Hao all compete for eyeballs in a crowded holiday season
By Patrick Frater

CMC Capital, Enlight Media

Eight Chinese-language films release simultaneously this weekend in mainland China and will vie for a slice of the Lunar New Year holiday box office business.

The week-long nationwide holiday period has in recent years become the most lucrative season for cinemas, and key films stake out their slot in the release calendar months or years in advance.

The new Chinese films all debut on Saturday (Friday is the normal day for releases in China) and should have an unchallenged two weeks on screen. But if the new Chinese films don’t perform well, there is already a string of new Hollywood releases queuing up for screen time, starting with “Argylle” on Feb. 23.

The week-long holiday this year officially runs Feb. 10-17, but employers are encouraged to give workers time off on Friday, Feb. 9 as well, ostensibly giving city dwellers time to return to their native villages and family seats in the countryside before the official start to festivities. The upheaval is sometimes described as the world’s largest annual migration.

Commentators are divided as to whether the 2024 season will be bigger than last year, when tickets worth $1 billion were sold in what may have been a frenzy of “revenge spending” following a miserable COVID-hit 2022.

Zhang Tong, senior analyst at China’s Maoyan Research Institute, estimates that the 2024 figure could come in at RMB 7-8 billion or $975 million to $1.1 billion. But comparisons may not be on equal footing as the extra dates make this “the longest Spring Holiday ever.”

“Current feedback shows that audiences are relatively positive about the Spring Festival movies this year and we are optimistic about the box office,” Zhang told Variety.

Last year’s top titles were Zhang Yimou’s period comedy drama “Full River Red,” which earned a career total of RMB4.55 billion ($633 million), and blockbuster sci-fi sequel “The Wandering Earth II,” which pulled in RMB4.03 billion ($561 million).

In 2024, both macro and micro conditions may weigh against box office records. At the macro level, China’s economy failed to rebound as strongly as had been hoped after COVID and is beset by a string of problems including the housing sector crisis (which weighs on saving and sentiment), high youth unemployment and strains on international trade. Other commentators point to weather and transport problems as possibly delaying or reducing cinema attendance.

The current crop of new Chinese fare offers fewer franchises than last year and productions made on lower budgets, according to state media. Also, local streaming platforms are offering a rich crop of new titles, thus giving spectators more reason to stay at home.

Pre-sales ticketing data suggests that the two theatrical frontrunners are: “Pegasus 2,” a car-racing comedy sequel to director and former racing driver Han Han’s 2019 hit of the same title, which pulled in $255 million; and “YOLO,” a warm-hearted comedy about appreciating oneself, reportedly adapted from the Japanese film “100 Yen Love.” “YOLO” is the second film by Jia Ling, the newcomer who touched millions of hearts with her time-travel tearjerker “Hi, Mom” at Chinese New Year in 2021. It earned a stunning RMB5.41 billion ($752 million).

Currently tracking in third place is “Article 20,” a light drama from Zhang Yimou that takes its title from the concept of justifiable defense in Chinese criminal law.

Tracking fourth, for now, is “The Movie Emperor,” a satirical comedy in which Hong Kong superstar Andy Lau allows himself to be humiliated and pilloried in a dissection of celebrity in the digital age. Classily directed by reliable hitmaker Ning Hao (“Crazy Racer,” “Crazy Racer”), the film premiered last fall in Toronto and was the closing film of the Busan Festival. But it pushed back its commercial release date and is gambling on China’s upcoming holiday season instead.

“Vida La Vida,” which sees two sick youngsters on a healing journey, is one of the few new-release titles that is not a comedy.

The session will also feature a trio of animation titles – the annual “Boonie Bears” franchise title, this one called “Time Twist” – and “Ba Jie,” directed by He Ranhao about demons, sacred artefacts and the entry to Heaven. “Huang Pi: God of Wealth Cat,” which uses motion capture for an animated tale about a multi-lingual cat who dispenses money, is also in the frame, but appears to have started its promotional campaign later than the others and early data from Maoyan shows it eighth in the pre-sales stakes.

China has the world’s largest installed base of Imax premium large format screens and the company has spent several years encouraging Chinese filmmakers to either shoot with Imax-approved technologies or to screen their finished pictures in its format. Four Chinese movies will show in Imax cinemas over the holiday season: “YOLO,” “Article 20,” “Boonie Bears: Time Twist, and “Pegasus 2.”

“The eventual Chinese New Year winner is sure to come from one of ‘YOLO,’ ‘Pegasus 2’ or ‘Article 20’,” said Maoyan’s Zhang. “Though with parent-child audiences ‘Boonie Bears’ is clearly the preferred choice.”

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[GeneChing]

Feb 18, 2024 11:13pm PT
China Box Office: Four Chinese Films Dominate Global Cinema Revenues as Lunar New Year Haul Tops $1.1 Billion

By Patrick Frater

Courtesy of Sony Pictures


Four Chinese films dominated the mainland China and global box office charts over the latest weekend. “YOLO,” a comedy drama about weight loss and self-discovery, was crowned as the top earning film worldwide for a second weekend running.

“YOLO” took $86.5 million (RMB614 million) between Friday and Sunday, giving it a 9-day cumulative total of $402 million (RMB2.85 million), according to data from consultancy firm Artisan Gateway.

The second film by Jia Ling, who previously directed 2021 Lunar New Year smash hit “Hi, Mom”, “YOLO” released on Saturday, Feb. 10 and has retained the number one position since the second day of the Chinese New Year holidays, staying narrowly ahead of racing comedy “Pegasus 2.”

Over the latest weekend “Pegasus 2” earned $80.6 million, giving it a running total of $356 million.

“Article 20,” the Zhang Yimou-directed legal comedy, improved significantly. It climbed up one place to third in the Chinese and global weekend charts and earned $70.2 million over the weekend. That compared with an opening weekend of $47.6 million and gives it a 9-day cumulative of $207 million.

Chinese animation “Boonie Bears: Time Twist” slipped to fourth in the Chinese weekend chart and fifth globally. (On the global chart provided by ComScore, “Bob Marley: One Love” took fourth spot, earning $56.7 million from 48 territories, including North America.) “Boonie Bears” added $52 million over the weekend for a 9-day cumulative of $209 million.

A long way behind, Ning Hao’s Andy Lau-starring “The Movie Emperor” took fifth place over the weekend in China. It took $1.3 million for a cumulative of $11.9 million.

Chinese ticketing agency, Maoyan calculates that the Lunar New Year or Chinese New Year holiday period brought in record box revenue of RMB8.02 billion or $1.11 billion, an 18% increase on 2023. But the agency previously said that comparison with prior years was not exact, due to the timing of the holidays this year. In mainland China, the holidays welcoming in the Year of the Dragon officially ran Saturday to Saturday (Feb. 10-17), but some folk may have taken the latest Sunday as leave, as well, making for an unusually long holiday.

In its latest note, Maoyan said that 163 million tickets were sold over the holiday period. That was a 26% year-on-year increase and implies that mean ticket prices were lower. Maoyan says that ticket prices over the holiday period dropped 6% to RMB49.1 ($6.82) apiece, reflecting both price cutting in the major metropolises and the skewing of attendance to third and fourth tier towns and cities, which this time accounted for 58% of box office business.

Artisan Gateway calculates that China’s running box office haul for the 2024 calendar year is $1.62 billion. That is some 14% behind 2023 levels, but the gap could be narrowed if the top titles have staying power or if the upcoming crop of Hollywood titles find good traction.

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