Chinese films struggling to gain profit overseas
We've brought up about how Kung fu genre is dead or dying or losing it's global relevence. But it goes beyond that. I found out that Chinese films overall regardless of what genre is struggling overseas when it come to profit. Despite Mainland Chinese cinema market being #2 on the global market, their domestic films are not winning international fanbases compared to the global popularity of Korean TV dramas (and K-pop).
I saw these 2 articles about how Chinese films are struggling overseas:
2015 article from Hollywood Reporter: Chinese Movies Still Struggle Overseas Despite Kung Fu's Global Appeal, Survey Shows
Chinese Films Struggling To Find An Audience Abroad
This isn't nothing new, it has been acknowledged since 2011 that Chinese films are struggling overseas despite the appeal of Kung fu film, and the popularity of Korean pop culture.
2011 article
2013 article
2013 Washington Times article
2015 article from South China Morning Post
Some reasons has been cited why Chinese films are struggling overseas:
Quote:
"What we've found is that people tend to watch Chinese films through free channels instead of going to theaters," said Huang Huilin, director of the AICCC.
"Most of the participants watch Chinese films online. The Internet offers fertile and challenging ground for Chinese filmmakers to exploit. And also kung-fu and comedy are still the most popular types of Chinese films among overseas viewers."
According to a survey conducted by the Academy for International Communication of Chinese Culture (AICCC), 30 percent of respondents considered “the thoughts and logic of Chinese films difficult to understand”, while less than 40 percent identified with the “values” expressed in the films. A third of respondents simply said they weren’t interested in Chinese films.
The survey included 1,800 respondents from 46 different countries across Asia, the Middle East, and Europe.
One argument as to why Chinese films are struggling abroad is a lack of marketing. Less than eight percent of surveyed respondents noticed Chinese film advertisements in their home countries, while 36 percent claim they’ve never seen any marketing for Chinese films at all.
According to Sha Dan, with the China Film Archive, one solution to the marketing issue is more Chinese films that are co-produced with foreign production companies: “Commercial packaging is necessary for Chinese films if they want to be better accepted, no matter what genre it is,” said Sha.
Another issue is subtitles. 70 percent of respondents said they were unsatisfied with subtitles, which often amount to nothing more than literal translations without reflecting the scene’s context. “To have quality subtitles, one will need to understand both Chinese culture and the culture of the foreign country,” said Luo Jun, deputy head of the AICCC. “We need Chinese who know foreign cultures well and expats who have an abundant knowledge of Chinese culture.”
Feng Xiaogang, a director and actor who starred in the recent box office hit Mr Six, offers another explanation. Feng believes that Chinese films fail abroad because they are poorly made and hindered by domestic censorship regulations. Feng also questions the industry’s hiring practices: “Most of the people working in the lighting department are from Henan province,” said Feng at the recent Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC). “They are not trained professionally – they got the job simply because they happen to know someone who works on the film crew.”
I do somewhat agree about what is said above, but I could add one more reason: the global popularity of Hallyu/Korean Wave could be overshadowing Chinese films from gaining popularity and overseas profit. It might explain why Korean films are gaining more international attention outside of Asia then any big-name Chinese films. I don't see any similar article above for Korean films, so I have to assume they're doing very well.
What do you think is causing Chinese films not to gain audiences overseas when Korean pop culture like K-pop and K-dramas are winning more global audiences?
There something else that doesn't add up
I've been reading up more information about Chinese films not gaining acceptance amongst US mainstream, When I read this something doesn't make sense to me, I'm going to quote this:
Quote:
Yet despite its Hollywood-style violence and an actor with international name recognition, "Let the Bullets Fly" hasn't even managed to find a distributor in the United States. When it played the Tribeca Film Festival in April, there were walkouts. "It's not going to be for everyone," director and costar Jiang Wen said in an interview afterward. "I just make movies and hope people appreciate them."
So let me get this straight, Korean TV dramas and to some extent, Korean films were able to get accepted amongst some spectrum of US mainstream. Yet Chinese films couldn't get the same type of audiences in the US that K-dramas got. So does this mean that if Let the Bullets fly (even with it's own issues) had been a Korean film, with a well-known Korean director (like let say this guy), and had a well-known Korean actors/actresses like Jun Ji-Hyun, Won Bin, Lee Min Ho, Park Shin Hye, and maybe a cast of well-known K-pop idols actors/actresses in it, then would that have done better in the US? I better hope this is not the case of "if it's not Korean, or if it doesn't have my oppas in there, I will not watch it!!!"
Quote:
Many of the current Chinese hits use historical reference points that elude Western audiences. "Let the Bullets Fly" is rife with allegorical meaning about standing up to corrupt leaders, while "Red Cliff" assumes a knowledge of Han dynasty politics. "It does present a little bit of a problem when a 3rd century potentate is presented casually in the way an American filmmaker would present George Washington," Magnolia Pictures President Eamonn Bowles said.
OK, so historical meaning was an issue. Yet Korean TV dramas like Dae Jang Geum/Jewel in the Palace, Queen Seondeok, Jumong, Empress Ki, Gyebaek, Gunman in Joseon, and The Moon embraces the Sun all got accepted and a big audiences in the US despite Korean history not being as well-known or "mainstream" compared to ancient Japanese and Chinese history. So if historical issues was an issue for Chinese films to get accepted in the US, then how did period/saeguk dramas from South Korea got accepted despite Korean history not being well-known.
There's one more thing, despite Chinese films struggling to get US audiences yet period TV dramas from Mainland China are somehow more accepted then films. I mean for example on Dramafever, several period dramas from China got a lot of positive reviews (not as high as their Korean counterparts, but still): Prince of Lan Ling, The Virtuous Queen of Han, Perfect Couple, and Sound of the Desert all got a lot of positive reviews from US fans who are not even Asian-Americans.
So here's the question: Are Chinese TV dramas more accepted in the US, then Chinese films? I think that might be the case, I'll use UK as an example
In the UK, non-English foreign films (except French, and Bollywood) are not doing very well over there:
BBC article: How foreign language films struggle for UK success
Do we Brits no longer have an appetite for foreign-language films?
Yet foreign TV dramas are accepted and are becoming more popular in the UK:
The growing popularity of subtitled television in the UK
The Returned: how British TV viewers came to lose their fear of subtitles
How foreign TV drama became de rigueur with UK viewers
Surprisingly, many of the people in the UK that watch these foreign TV shows/dramas don't branch out to foreign language films unlike how fans of K-dramas and K-pop do branch out to Korean films. So is it that foreign TV dramas become more accepted in the UK then foreign films? Or is there other factors that we don't know about?