Chollywood rising

[GeneChing]

Plus four. oh yay.

China's limit on imported films relaxed amid box office downturn
New releases increase number of Hollywood films shown in China to 38 – four more than the usual quota


Disaster movie Deepwater Horizon has secured a Chinese release on 15 November. Photograph: David Lee

Alan Evans
@itsalanevans
Tuesday 1 November 2016 05.59 EDT

China appears to have relaxed its rule limiting the number of Hollywood films that can be shown each year in a bid to boost slowing box office returns.

In the last few days, a number of Hollywood films have secured release dates, pushing the total released in China this year to at least 38, compared to the usual quota of 34. Deepwater Horizon, Keeping Up With the Joneses and Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children have been given release dates, and films including Doctor Strange, Trolls, Allied, Moana and Sully had been confirmed.

The quota of 34 applies to films imported on a revenue-sharing basis, allowing US distributors to collect 25% of box office revenue. Other films can be imported on a flat-fee basis – in which Chinese distributors pay one fee and keep all of the profits – and account for about 30 films a year.

According to China Film Insider, a spokesperson for the Chinese film bureau denied that the quota had been exceeded, saying some of the films did not count towards the number as they were “cultural exchange projects”.

US studios are keen to capitalise on China’s enormous box office potential. A deal in 2012 increased the number of foreign imports from 20 and also improved the share of profits US studios received.

After years of growth in China, box office takings in 2016 have fallen far short of what was expected – just $5.6bn (£4.57bn) of the hoped-for $8.9bn has been made so far. This downturn is thought to have prompted the relaxation of the quota as officials attempt to reinvigorate the film industry.

The 2012 deal was valid for five years and will be up for renegotiation in February, when it appears the quota may be increased considerably. China Film Insider reported that a state official warned the domestic industry to prepare for “intensive and fair” competition, while the Hollywood Reporter suggested that the number of imports was likely to be increased by 10 to accommodate arthouse movies and Oscar winners.

[GeneChing]

China film news is buzzing right now. I'm just going to post a few on the Chollywood Rising thread for now and more later.

The Silver Lining Behind China’s Box Office Slowdown
7:03 PM PDT 11/2/2016 by Rebecca Sun


Getty Images
Wanda cinema in China

Execs at the U.S.-China Film & TV Industry Expo optimistically see a more stable pace characterized by a focus on quality over quantity.
Chinese film executives are putting a positive spin on the country’s bearish 2016 box office.

"We’re still very optimistic [about the Chinese market],” said Wanda Cultural Industry Group head Jack Gao, speaking at the 3rd annual U.S.-China Film & TV Industry Expo on Wednesday. Noting that “there’s no way you can explode 50 percent year to year,” as the Chinese market had done through the first quarter of this year, Gao predicted a more “steady and sustainable” rate of 15 percent growth over the next decade.

William Feng, who oversees Greater China for the Motion Picture Association, explained that a big reason for the box office slowdown stems from the elimination of ticket pricing irregularities and the government cracking down on fraudulent box-office reporting. “With that big portion of fake box office being wiped out, there’s been a big drop,” he said.

Both Hollywood and Chinese executives admitted that the record-setting growth in recent years created a glut of product that wasn’t always up to standard. “If you look at the movies we were making here and sending overseas, a lot were sequels to franchises that we grew up with, but not [Chinese audiences],” said LeVision Entertainment president Adam Goodman. “We can’t just treat China’s mad growth like, ‘It doesn’t matter what we do, if we put it there, it will find an audience.’ The consumers want something that is theatrical-worthy.”

Multiple experts declared that despite the depressed box office numbers, the Chinese audience’s demand for content still outweighs supply. China’s status as the world’s second-biggest movie market comes despite the fact that its per-capita number of screens is still less than a quarter of that in the top-ranked U.S. And the country is building more and more screens (led by the Wanda Cinema Line, which expects to grow its market share by 2 to 3 percent annually), expanding access to audiences in third- and fourth-tier cities.

Driven by this growth, Gao ambitiously predicted that by the end of the next decade, China’s box office would be 2.5 times that of the United States: “The market is still growing, so it’s our job to get good content and work with Hollywood filmmakers to fill the need of that market.”

[GeneChing]

Wanda Wants to Build Its Way Out of China’s Box Office Slump
Patrick Frater
Asia Bureau Chief


Wanda Cinema Line

NOVEMBER 2, 2016 | 11:03AM PT

Jack Gao, Wanda’s head of international developments, says that the giant Chinese group is unfazed by the recent slowdown of the Chinese box office and plans to maintain an aggressive pace of multiplex building.

“The slowdown was not a surprise,” said Gao, group VP and CEO of international investments and business development at Wanda Cultural Industry Group. He was speaking Tuesday at the Chinese-American Film Festival Summit and echoed many of the same sentiments at the U.S.-China Film & TV Expo summit on Wednesday at L.A. Live. “We didn’t expect it to happen so fast, but you know what, it is a good thing.”

China’s theatrical box office had grown in an almost unbroken upswing for almost a decade, hitting an astonishing 49% growth rate last year, to finish 2015 with a total of $6.8 billion. This year started brightly and further records were broken at Chinese New Year in February. But from June onward revenues have flatlined and the year will likely end up with single figure or low double-digit percentage growth.

Cinema-building this year means that some 8,000 new screens are likely to go live this — down from an even higher figure last year. By the year’s end, the total in operation could come close to 40,000, putting China almost on a parallel with North America, albeit with a population of 1.3 billion, compared with North America’s 300 million-plus.

“Wanda will continue to build around 1,500 screens per year for the next decade,” said Gao. Its Wanda Cinema Line division is already China’s largest private sector cinema operator. “We see box office growth of a sustainable 15% per year over that time. That will make the China market possibly 2.5 time bigger than the U.S. The number of screen count could reach 120,000 screens. We remain very optimistic.”

In another sign that Wanda intends to build its way out of the current situation, the company placed an order for 150 more Imax screens in August.

Gao also hinted that Wanda expects AMC, its U.S. exhibition subsidiary, to complete its acquisition of Carmike Cinemas by the end of the year.

120,000 screens. wow.

[GeneChing]

Huayi Boss Denies Communist Influence in China’s Hollywood Dealings
Patrick Frater
Asia Bureau Chief


EDWARD TUCKWELL FOR VARIETY
NOVEMBER 2, 2016 | 06:58PM PT

James Wang (aka Wang Zhonglei), co-chief of China’s Huayi Brothers Media, poured cold water on the notion that the Communist Party is behind Chinese companies’ recent incursions into Hollywood.

“This is a joke,” said Wang on Wednesday in Los Angeles. “We are trying to develop our own markets.” He was speaking at the UCFTI Convention on Chinese-U.S. movie industry relations at L.A. Live, taking place the same week as the American Film Market in Santa Monica.

Some members of the U.S. Congress have suggested that regulators in America examine the recent Chinese investments. But Wang made careful distinction between the recent succession of Chinese investments and the string of Japanese corporate maneuvers in the 1990s and early 21st century, which provoked similar fears.

“In China, capital is seeking out content. Here (U.S.) companies are currently seeking capital,” said Wang. And finance is something that Chinese firms have provided in abundance in the past two years.

Chinese investments in Hollywood have included Fosun International’s equity investment in Jeff Robinov’s Studio 8, through co-financing deals of Perfect World and Bona Film Group (into Universal’s current production lineup, and 20th Century Fox’s current slate) to strategic co-operation deals between Alibaba and Amblin Partners and Wanda’s acquisition of Legendary Entertainment and the AMC cinema chain. Huayi is an equity investor and co-financing partner in mini-studio STX.

“(In its U.S. outreach) Huayi wants to focus on content and production companies,” said Wang. And he noted that is not a new approach.

Huayi was one of the first Chinese movie enterprises to be involved with a Hollywood studio. The company made several films with Columbia Pictures Film Production Asia, a late 20th century China production initiative that with hindsight now looks to have been ahead of its time.

Pressed to explain how Chinese companies obtain government permission to export capital and make overseas investments, Wang was ****ing. “I didn’t realize that Washington D.C. was also in the business of telling stories,” he said.

“There is no such approval process,” Wang said. “I need approval from my board of directors, not the (Chinese) government.”

Wang said that the Chinese film industry has much to learn from Hollywood, especially in talent and production, and suggested that China may actually be suffering a brain drain. “(China is) now making 700 movies a year, but the number of quality movies has not increased proportionately. If you have good ideas and skills please come to China now. There is a mismatch between talent and production and this way we have a lot of bad movies,” Wang said. “There are lots of Chinese going to study film in the U.S., but not all of them are coming back.

It's not the chicoms. It's the tuhao. It's about the money, like always.

[GeneChing]

The reason Monster Hunt, The Mermaid & Skiptrace didn't do well in the U.S. was that they all kinda sucked. Sometimes there's just no accounting for Chinese taste.

Can China Make a Movie the Whole World Will Love?
6:30 AM PDT 11/2/2016 by Rebecca Sun


Courtesy of Saban Films
'Skiptrace'

Amid a domestic box-office slump, Chinese production companies seek to emulate Hollywood's worldwide "marketing and distribution muscle," said panelists at the Asia Society's 7th annual U.S.-China Film Summit.
In the throes of an uncharacteristic down year for the Chinese box office, it may no longer be enough to churn out product only for the local population. According to experts gathered at the Asia Society’s 7th annual U.S.-China Film Summit, China’s movie industry is more anxious than ever to create content that performs internationally.

“The Chinese are looking for how much further they can take their films,” said William Pfeiffer, executive chairman of global local-language production and financing consortium Globalgate Entertainment. Speaking on a Tuesday panel at UCLA’s Ruskin Conference Center, Pfeiffer said learning from Hollywood’s “marketing and distribution muscle” are among China’s key motivations for allying with U.S. companies.

None of China’s recent hits — Monster Hunt, The Mermaid, Skiptrace — have found much success beyond Asia. The latter film, a Jackie Chan-Johnny Knoxville buddy comedy directed by Renny Harlin, made 97.5 percent of its $136 million worldwide gross in China. Dasym Media Managing Director Charles Coker, a producer on the movie, conceded that it was “not current for American tastes.”

“It was written by an American scriptwriter under the auspices of a Chinese development team,” he added. “Putting a proper financing deal together is more objective than figuring out what works from a creative standpoint.”

Sheri Jeffrey, a partner at entertainment law firm Hogan Lovells, agreed that most so-called co-productions to date have been co-financing transactions. “How to develop a story that’s wildly successful in China and out of China: that’s the nut we have to crack,” she said, adding that early word on Legendary’s $135 million The Great Wall, which premieres in China over the holidays before rolling out to the U.S. in February, is that it too will play disproportionately better on one side of the Pacific.

The secret may be patience, which characterized the mutual courtship between Alibaba Pictures and Amblin Partners before they struck a long-term strategic partnership in October. Sharing the summit stage with Amblin president and co-CEO Jeff Small, Alibaba Pictures president Zhang Wei said that the two companies are taking their time looking for the right project to make together.

“It has to feel very organic,” she said. “We’re not going to force any Chinese elements into Steven [Spielberg]’s movies, and we don’t have to define something as a ‘China story’ or an ‘American story.’ So many stories in Hollywood are about universal values that people around the world can appreciate. We can tell those stories as well.”

[GeneChing]

When an aspiring actress hangs herself from this sign, it will have arrived.

See China's Answer to the Hollywood Sign
6:00 AM PDT 11/2/2016 by Patrick Brzeski


David Hogsholt
Wanda Studios Qingdao

High above Wanda's $8.2 billion Qingdao Movie Metropolis sits a giant sign that the company hopes will become as iconic as the celebrated Los Angeles landmark.
Chinese conglomerate Dalian Wanda Group, headed by Asia's richest man, Wang Jianlin, is building the world's largest film studio on China's eastern coast, about 300 miles north of Shanghai. But to truly compete with Hollywood, Wanda needed more than just a world-class filmmaking facility — it needed a sign.
The seaside city of Qingdao is known to most Americans as the home of Tsingtao beer, but that may be about to change. Wanda, a real estate company attempting an aggressive transition into global entertainment, has invested $8.2 billion to construct the filmmaking facility in the city. Dubbed the Wanda Qingdao Movie Metropolis, the finished project will span 408 acres and comprise 45 state-of-the-art soundstages, including the world's largest, as well as China's biggest indoor and outdoor water tanks (for an inside look at the studio, see here).
Overlooking it all, perched on the upper portion of a rocky mountaintop Wanda calls "Movie Metropolis Hill," sits a gigantic sign made of four Chinese characters in white: 东方影都. In translation, they read: "Movie Metropolis of the East."
"You can see it from almost anywhere you are in the studio," says Morgan Hunwicks, a Canadian and a production veteran who spent 10 years working at Fox Studios in Sydney before joining Wanda Studios Qingdao as head of production. "The idea, obviously, is our version of the Hollywood sign," he says. "It's taller, but [not as long as] the Hollywood one."
Whether Wanda's Qingdao sign will become an iconic landmark like its counterpart across the Pacific — which has overlooked Los Angeles since 1923 — remains to be seen. But Wanda is certainly trying to make it so: To lure Hollywood projects to its studio, the company has set up on of the world's most lucrative production incentives, a 40 percent rebate for qualifying film and TV projects that shoot there. And in an effort to make the area a comfortable working environment for international film professionals, Wanda is building luxury hotels, restaurants, bars, condos, a marina, a hospital and more atop a giant artificial island out in the Yellow Sea beside the studio site.
"It's fun to be a part of a project that was built from the ground up," added Hunwicks. "During my time at Fox, I think the most we ever built was a storage shed, because the studio had been around for a while and was in an existing footprint — there's just no space. But here the horizon is the limit."

[GeneChing]

Here's some more

Bona Film Seeks Status as Chinese Major Ahead of IPO (EXCLUSIVE)
Patrick Frater
Asia Bureau Chief


NOVEMBER 5, 2016 | 08:00PM PT

Bona Film Group is building on its role as one of China’s most successful distributors and is looking to expand its business both in Hollywood and in China, prior to a new IPO in 2018.

The company this week signed a deal to launch a $20 million film investment fund with Imax China, the Hong Kong stock market-listed offshoot of Imax. The pair will invest in Chinese movies and conversions of Chinese titles for release on the country’s huge number of giant screens. Imax China, which has a similar fund with China Media Capital, currently has some 320 screens in commercial operation, with an order book for nearly 300 more. The fund would likely give Bona’s Imax screens priority access to some of the titles.

Bona is also expanding the co-financing arrangement it has through The Seelig Group in the current slate of Twentieth Century Fox. That has already seen Bona invest $235 million in six movies including “The Martian” and “Independence Day: Resurgence.” Bona chairman and founder Yu Dong told Variety that Bona is now committed to seven movies and that he intends to continue co-financing other titles in the Fox lineup on a picture-by-picture basis.

In a separate deal, Bona is also an investor-producer in the upcoming Ang Lee title “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk.” The company has converted two of its theaters — one each in Beijing and Shanghai — to be part of the tiny network of just five cinemas worldwide that will present the movie in the full 120 frames per second, 4K, 3D version that Lee ambitiously conceived.

The other screens are in New York, Los Angeles, and Lee’s native Taiwan. The film is set for release in China, Taiwan, and North America on Nov. 11.

Bona, currently riding high at the box office with fact-based action film “Operation Mekong,” has greenlighted a clutch of top projects for 2017-18. They include “Red Sea Operation,” a new actioner from “Mekong” director Dante Lam that will see the Chinese army in action in Yemen; an untitled film directed by Han Han, the blogger and race-car driver who delivered $100 million Bona hit “The Continent” in 2014; and “The Birth of an Army.” The big-budget, patriotic movie will be made style of all-star hits “Beginning of the Great Revival,” and “The Founding of a Republic.” The new picture will be produced by “Republic” and “Revival” producer Huang Jianxin and directed by Hong Kong’s Andrew Lau Wai-keung (“Infernal Affairs,” “Revenge of the Green Dragons”.)

A powerhouse slate and distribution success would nicely tee up the company for a return to the stock market. Bona was previously listed on the NASDAQ, but was taken private with finance from Yu, Alibaba, Tencent, and Studio 8 financier Fosun Intl.

With entertainment plays attracting huge investment flows in China, relisting on a Chinese exchange would be expected to deliver a vastly higher rating than the company enjoyed in the U.S. Yu says that the company wants to take the conventional IPO route, rather than financial engineering through a reverse into a shell vehicle, and that Bona is now queueing for a flotation, likely in 2018.

Meantime, Yu says that he is enjoying the support of his two major backers, internet giants Alibaba and Tencent. “They are very far from passive investors,” he said. “They are providing active support in marketing and distribution. What they are not doing is picking the movies we should make.”

Yu, who has previously voiced concern that China’s internet majors could dominate the movie industry, now says that there has been a subtle, but important lesson learned from this year’s box office slowdown.

“The internet companies are coming to realize that storytelling and an emphasis on quality and execution has a bigger impact and lasts longer than internet-originated concepts. That experience is what (Alibaba and Tencent) are getting from Bona,” Yu said. In “From Vegas to Macau III” and “Mekong,” Bona this year has produced two of the top seven films this year in China.

“When we come back to the stock market we want to be viewed as one of China’s majors in the same way as people talk about the Hollywood majors,” Yu said.

To that end, Yu is now hatching further plans to vertically integrate upstream into production services, and downstream into theme parks. The company is planning to build sound stages and post-production facilities at Huairou, northwest of Beijing, in the same district as the studios operated by China Film group and where the Beijing Film Academy also plans to build a production base.

[GeneChing]

Interesting development for Monkey King 2 & Time Raiders.

AFM: CMC Pictures Makes Market Debut With Slate of Chinese Hits
Patrick Frater
Asia Bureau Chief


COURTESY OF LE VISION PICTURES
NOVEMBER 5, 2016 | 07:54PM PT

“Someone to Talk to,” a Chinese relationship drama in which a man discovers his wife’s extra-marital affairs and considers killing her, is prominent among the debut American Film Market slate of CMC Pictures. It enjoyed a wide release in Chinese theaters this weekend.

Founded earlier this year, the company is the rights sales arm of the China Media Capital group, a powerhouse fund group. Under the chairmanship of former Shanghai Media Group boss Li Ruigang, CMC has some 80 media investments and is weaving together an integrated conglomerate that stretches from film production and distribution, through sports ownership to VR and smart TV technology.

Among CMC’s highest profile holdings is Flagship Entertainment, a joint venture with Warner Bros. to make Chinese movies.

CMC Pictures expects to handle the smaller-budget movies flowing from the CMC portfolio companies including Flagship, Gravity Pictures, vfx and production firm BaseFX, and Infinity Pictures, a production outfit headed by former Weinstein Co. and Sony executive Dede Nickerson.

One of the first such Flagship titles to be handled by CMC Pictures is “When Larry Met Mary,” a relationship comedy directed by Zhang Wen that was released in July for a gross of $40 million. (IM Global is handling the larger-budget Flagship picture “the Adventurers” at the AFM.)

CMC is also handling Aaron Kwok- and Gong Li-starring “Monkey King 2” from Hong Kong’s Filmko, which grossed $185 million in Chinese theaters; and “Time Raiders,” from Le Vision Pictures, which grossed $150 million.

Currently unreleased CMC titles include: “Suddenly Seventeen,” a body swap comedy that marks the feature directing debut of Zhang Mo, Zhang Yimou’s daughter; and “Buddies in India,” a film about a nobody and his surreal experiences abroad is directed, stars and is co-produced by Wang Bao-Qiang, the star of smash hits “Lost in Thailand” and “Detective Chinatown.” Enlight Pictures is the film’s other producer, and, with a prime Dec. 23 release date, expectations are high that it will be one of the biggest movies of the year.

“China has very few film sales companies. We are here for the long-term and expect to attend all of the major markets from now on, including FilMart and Cannes,” said Wei Jingyi, a veteran executive with previous positions including National Geographic Channel and Bloomberg.

[GeneChing]

The censorship issue is a little ironic as Hollywood really wants money and China is delivering the most money. But who is going to pay for films that make them look bad?

China passes restrictive new film law
Monday November 7, 2016
06:10 PM GMT+8


Brad Pitt among Hollywood celebrities subject to fierce criticism for their sympathy for the Dalai Lama. — Reuters file pic

BEIJING, Nov 7 — China passed a restrictive and long-discussed film law today banning content deemed harmful to the “dignity, honour and interests” of the People’s Republic and encouraging the promotion of “socialist core values”.

Booming box-office receipts have drawn Hollywood studios and a growing Chinese filmmaking industry into fierce competition for the Asian giant’s movie market, which PricewaterhouseCoopers projects will rise from US$4.3 billion (RM18 billion) in 2014 to US$8.9 billion in 2019 — outstripping the US.

The new set of laws governs the promotion of the film industry and was approved by the National People’s Congress Standing Committee at their meeting in the capital today.

The law states that its aim is to “spread core socialist values”, enrich the masses’ spiritual and cultural life, and set ground rules for the industry.

It forbids content that stirs up opposition to the law or constitution, harms national unity, sovereignty or territorial integrity, exposes national secrets, harms Chinese security, dignity, honour or interests, or spreads terrorism or extremism.

Also banned are subjects that “defame the people’s excellent cultural traditions”, incite ethnic hatred or discrimination or destroy ethnic unity.

It is also illegal for Chinese firms to hire or partner with overseas productions deemed to have views “harmful to China’s dignity, honour and interests, harm social stability or hurt the feelings of the Chinese people”.

The Communist Party fiercely criticises governments and public figures who have expressed sympathy for the Dalai Lama, previously the darling of Hollywood celebrities such as Brad Pitt.

Companies that work on such content face fines up to five times their illegal earnings over 500,000 yuan (RM310,320), it said.

Films must not “violate the country’s religious policies, spread cults, or superstitions”, insult or slander people.

The law comes into effect on March 1 next year.

Only 34 foreign films are given cinema releases each year under a quota set by Beijing, and all are subject to official censorship of content deemed politically sensitive or obscene.

To get around restrictions, Hollywood studios looking to capitalise on China’s burgeoning market have sought partnerships with local companies.

Co-produced movies can bypass the quota as long as they contain significant Chinese elements, such as characters, plot devices or locations.

The new laws also propose fines for those who provide false box office sales data, a widespread problem as firms have been exposed pumping up ticket sales to generate marketing buzz. — AFP

[GeneChing]

Wait...this November 16 (like next week) or Nov 16, 2017? Lately I don't put to much stock in predictive stats...

There’ll soon be more movie theaters in China than in the US
Luke Graham | @LukeWGraham
8 Hours Ago CNBC.com

The number of movie theaters in China will soon take over the number in the U.S., taking the title of world's largest movie market in terms of screen numbers.

At the end of September, China had 39,194 screens, compared with an estimated 40,475 in the U.S. China has been building new cinema screens at a rate of 27 screens a day this year.

At this rate, China is expected to overtake the U.S. by November 16, according to analysis by IHS Markit.


BJI | Getty Images
Movie screening in a cinema in China.

"The rate that China has been building cinema screens is very high," said David Han****, director of film and cinema analysis at IHS Technology, in a press release.

"In the first nine months of this year, China added just over 7,500 new cinema screens, continuing a trend seen over the past few years. China has been building cinema screens at a rate of over 10 a day for the past five years, rising to 27 a day this year."

The growth of China's movie business has been rapid. In 2003, China's box office revenue totaled just $121 million. That year, China opened up the market to overseas exhibition groups and invested more heavily in the sector. By 2015, box office revenue had grown to more than $7 billion.

In terms of revenue, the Chinese market is still smaller than the U.S. According to consultancy PwC, the revenue will grow from $9.9 billion in 2016 to $11 billion in 2020.

However, IHS forecasts that China's box office revenue will top the U.S. market by 2019.

"This is an interesting story all the more remarkable for the rapidity of China's ascent to the top spot in the market," Han**** added.

This change will have a big impact on the film industry. Already, Hollywood film studios are catering for the Chinese market by changing characters and adding or deleting scenes.

[GeneChing]

I predict a bounce back in late January with Chinese New Year - the Year of the Flaming ****.

China Box Office Down for Third Month Running
Patrick Frater
Asia Bureau Chief


DECEMBER 13, 2016 | 12:01AM PT

China’s theatrical box office recorded the third consecutive month of decline in November. That puts the full year on course for only a narrow single figure increase.

Theatrical takings in November amounted to RMB2.54 billion, a 5% drop compared with RMB2.66 billion in November 2015. It follows a 19% drop in October and a 33% September on September decline, according to data from Ent Group.

For the year to end of November, Chinese cinemas have recorded gross revenues of RMB41.1 billion, a gain of 3%, compared with the first 11 months of last year. The full-year total was RMB43.9 billion in 2015. December is usually one of the two biggest cinema-going months of the year.

In admissions terms, the first 11 months of this year are 10% ahead of the same point in 2015. Ticket sales reached 1.25 billion, compared with 1.13 billion in January-November 2015.

Average ticket prices have declined by some 15%, from RMB34.9 to a mean RMB30.2. That reflects the weakening, more competitive, market. And it also reflects the expansion of cinema chains into third and fourth tier cities where the cost of living is lower.

China’s film industry regulators have warily allowed more imported films than the normal 34 revenue sharing quotas would suggest. That may give the Hollywood imports a narrow market share victory over China’s local films.

But the 6% weakening of the Chinese currency against the US dollar, spells a reduction in the value of revenues remitted to the stateside headquarters of the Hollywood majors. On Jan. 1 RMB6.49 bought $1. Today it takes RMB6.90 to buy one unit of the US currency.

[GeneChing]

Here's the yin story:

China Box Office Flatlines in 2016
1:40 AM PST 12/20/2016 by Patrick Brzeski


Courtesy of Sony Pictures
Stephen Chow's 'The Mermaid' earned $526.8 million in China in February, before the market began to soften.

After expanding 48 percent in 2015, it is projected to grow just 4.5 percent this year — but the picture for Hollywood is slightly rosier.
The year began with projections that China was on the verge of becoming the world's largest movie market, but 2016 might end up being remembered as the year the country's film sector fell back to earth.

For over a decade, China's box office has expanded at least twice as fast as the country's overall economy — from 2003 to 2015, year-over-year growth averaged 35 percent or more, according to state media regulators. The Chinese market's huge performance in 2015 (48 percent full-year growth) and an even bigger first quarter this year (50 percent growth; the territory's first half-billion-dollar movie, Stephen Chow's The Mermaid), left analysts hurrying to bump their forecasts of China's ascendance to early 2017.

But the second quarter delivered a surprising correction: a 4.6 percent year-on-year decline, the territory's first full-quarter slide in half a decade. And the downward trend has only deepened in the second half of the year. From July 1 to Dec. 15, China's box office contracted 10.5 percent compared with the same period in 2015, according to Beijing-based box-office monitor Ent Group.

Thanks to the huge first quarter, box office for the year so far — Jan. 1 to Dec. 15 — is still up 5 percent. But the remaining two weeks could erode that bulwark a little further.

Legendary Entertainment's Matt Damon-starring co-production The Great Wall has injected some much needed energy into the marketplace, opening to $67.4 million last weekend. Local fantasy adventure Mojin: The Lost Legend, however, earned even more during roughly the same window last year. That film debuted to $92 million and went on to earn $255.7 million — a total The Great Wall won't match.

Factoring in the remaining releases of 2016, Ent Group forecasts that China's full-year 2016 growth rate will land at 4.5 percent — way below the 30 percent China's media regulators had targeted.

The forces behind the slowdown have been a regular subject of debate — and hand-wringing — throughout the year. Most industry observers converge around a combination of factors: weaker local films, a crackdown on box-office fraud, cutbacks in last year's generous ticket subsidies from online platforms trying to build market share, overall weakness in the Chinese economy and increased consumer discernment among China's new moviegoers (for a more detailed look at the causes of the slowdown, see here).

Hoping to escape the ignominy of a full-year decline — and the political heat that would come with it — China's regulators turned to Hollywood for help late in the year.

First, they relaxed their usual blackout on foreign-film imports during the summer blockbuster season. For years, regulators have boosted local films by keeping Hollywood imports out of the market during most of July and August. This year, several Hollywood titles were allowed in — Paramount's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows on July 2, Warner Bros.' The Legend of Tarzan on July 19, and Universal's The Secret Life of Pets on Aug. 2.

Even more striking, in late fall, officials discreetly loosened their infamous quota on foreign film imports. Under the terms of a trade deal negotiated in 2012, foreign studios usually can release just 34 films in China each year (on revenue-sharing terms). But regulators were wiling to let this lever go rather than countenance the threat of a full-year decline. By mid-November it was clear that at least 38 foreign titles would be brought in, with Warner Bros.' Sully and 20th Century Fox's Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children scoring early December dates, along with Japan's anime smash hit Your Name. In past years, December was reserved as a local-movie-only blackout period.

A spokesperson for China's film bureau denied to local media that the quota had been breached, saying that the additional titles were "cultural exchange projects." Insiders describe this characterization as a face-saving exercise — however it was described, more movies were brought in.

Hollywood's year in China has been slightly rosier than the local industry's as a whole. The first half of 2016 seemed to spell trouble — imported films saw only 5 percent growth year-on-year. But thanks to the lighter hand taken by regulators, the second half has improved. Revenue from imported titles — most of which are U.S. studio films — is up 18.9 percent from July 1 to Dec. 15. Imported titles also have claimed 43.5 percent market share at the Chinese box office thus far (Jan. 1 to Dec. 15), up from 38.4 percent in 2015.

China's year-end box office total is usually released on Jan. 1. This year's tally will be met with less fanfare, and more scrutiny.

[GeneChing]

And here's the yang story:

At 40,917, China has more film screens than US
POSTED BY: GOPI DECEMBER 20, 2016



Beijing, Dec 20 (IANS) There are 40,917 film screens in Chinese theatres as of December 20, the country's film bureau said on Tuesday.

The film industry has seen huge growth, with 26 film screens on average added each day during 2016, Xinhua news agency cited the film bureau as saying.

At least 85 per cent of all new screens can play 3D movies.

The number of screens in the US market has been stable over the years, and stood at 40,759 by the end of May, America's National Association of Theater Owners said in a statement.

Accordingly, China has overtaken the US in terms of film screen numbers, the bureau said.

Box office sales in China, the world's second largest film market, have posted average growth of 35 per cent year on year since 2003.

China's 2016 box office sales are expected to exceed the 2015 total of 44 billion yuan ($6.4 billion).

[GeneChing]

At least my Chollywood Rising column title remains safe.

China Box Office Should Still Pass US Within 5 Years Despite Slump
Sheer numbers and an extraordinarily poor slate of summer films might mean 2016 was a blip on the radar
Matt Pressberg
Published 5:18 pm, Wednesday, December 21, 2016



Hollywood has been bracing for its seemingly imminent usurping as the world’s largest movie market by China, which was forecasted to come as soon as 2017. After a summer drought in the Middle Kingdom, Tinseltown isn’t going to have to hand off the baton just yet – but it will soon.
After growing a staggering 49 percent between 2014 and 2015 to $6.8 billion and continuing to surge in the first half of the year behind the country’s biggest movie ever, China’s yearly box office looks like it will finish essentially flat. That will keep it well behind the U.S. box office, which cleared $11 billion for the first time last year and sits at $10.7 billion as of Dec. 21, with Christmas season still to come.
While a major factor in China’s plateau has been the reduction of exceedingly generous online ticketing subsidies — you used to be able to see new films in Imax 3D for $5 or so — China’s film industry had an unseasonably ice cold summer, and probably won’t get that unlucky again.
That’s a major reason why Jonathan Papish, an industry analyst at China Film Insider, says he still expects China’s box office to surpass the U.S. in the near future.
“I think China will overtake North America within the next five years,” he told TheWrap.
Papish pointed out that this summer’s slump isn’t likely to repeat itself, and if it had one of last summer’s multiple summer hits it would have been a very different story.
“What we’ll likely see for the next few years or maybe even decade is some up years and some down years,” Papish said. “I think the key variable in this equation is the quality of films released in any given year. If this summer had another ‘Monster Hunt’ or ‘Jian Bing Man’ or even ‘Goodbye Mr. Loser,’ we’d have seen 30 to 35 percent growth in 2016.”
All three of those films (plus “Lost in Hong Kong”) were released between July and September 2015 and made at least $186 million in China, with “Monster Hunt” topping out at $382 million — just a hair behind “Furious 7,” China’s highest grossing movie of 2015, and at that point, all-time. China traditionally imposes an unofficial summer blackout period over much of July and August, clearing the field for local fare like “Monster Hunt” to do monster numbers.
But this year, after “The Mermaid” burst out of the gates in February to become the country’s top-grossing film ever with $527 million, Chinese cinema kind of ran out of gas. No other homegrown movie cleared the $200 million mark, and the highest-grossing summer movie was “Operation Mekong,” with $170 million.
And while a handful of imported films such as “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows” were allowed in during the summer, it’s not like they cannibalized Chinese films. “Warcraft,” a movie that made more than four times as much money in China than in the U.S., was the only Hollywood movie released over the summer that cracked the top 18 of the Chinese box office.
Hollywood knows better than any industry that nothing is a sure thing, not even growth in China. But Papish said he wouldn’t expect this year to be a trend as long as the release schedule has just a few more monsters.

[boxerbilly]

Well maybe if Hollywood made good films ( okay some are really good) they would not have to worry. If China makes better films. They win ! I guess we will know in 5 years or so. Thankfully lots of people have Netflix and are now instantly and easily exposed to other country films. I used to have to go to specific independent video stores for specific titles from other country's.

Hey does anyone know the title to a Chinese gangster film set in like 1920's about 3 brothers I believe ? I only saw the leader trailers on a vhs tape like 10-15 years back. I did not write down the title and never forgot I want to see that one.

Actually if you know of it and there is a trailer please put it up. I'll know if it is it once I see it.


This may be it but I recall a trailer showing more action-