Monster Hunt

[GeneChing]

This just set box office records across China. It is now the highest grossing film in China ever.

[GeneChing]

And probably the only forum review as few of you here watch Chinese cinema as vigilantly as I do. But then again, it is part of my job.

So the plot: A cook/mayor/ne'er-do-well dude gets impregnated by the refugee monster queen and gives birth to a four-armed radish. Monsters, monster hunters, paper-cut golems and exotic meat chefs are hunting for the radish baby using magic and Kung Fu. The radish baby becomes full-auto weaponized when fed fruits. The monsters look like doughy versions of How to Train Your Dragon dragons, but they are really yao (妖), which here are depicted mostly as anamorphic vegetables. Sword fights, Bollywood dance numbers, Disney deaths, cool sets although a little H.R. Pufnstuf-ish, monster **** jokes, mediocre CGI. Entertaining fight scenes. Shrek-esque dance numbers and annoying musical interludes in monster language (which is subtitled in Chinese and translated into nonsense syllables in the English subs). Mostly predictable although there are a few decent mcguffins. The good monsters go vegetarian.

The fact that this was major blockbuster in China is just another reason why China won't have a global hit anytime soon.

[GeneChing]

This only makes sense if you see Monster Hunt.

Raman Hui is CineAsia Director of the Year



By Kevin Ma

Tue, 27 October 2015, 16:20 PM (HKT)
Awards News

Raman HUI 許誠毅 is to be awarded Director of the Year at the Asian distributor convention CineAsia (8–10 Dec 2015).

Hui is being recognised for the box office success of Monster Hunt 捉妖記, Chinese-Language cinema's highest grossing film. The fantasy adventure was Hui's live-action debut after directing several animated films in Hollywood.

Monster Hunt is being screened this weekend in Tokyo as part of the annual Tokyo Chinese Film Week, a sidebar of the Tokyo International Film Festival 東京国際映画祭.

The convention announced in July that CJ-CGV's SEO Jeong 서정 will receive the Exhibitor of the Year award for its successful expansion from South Korea to other territories in Asia.

Both awards will be presented on the final day of the convention at a special award ceremony.

[GeneChing]

40 million free tickets bumps up your gross = that's weird box office math

Over 40 million free tickets were given out to help make 'Monster Hunt' China's top grossing film of all time



In response to public suspicion concerning record-breaking box office figures of the homegrown hit Monster Hunt, Chinese state broadcaster CCTV has suggested that the ticket sales numbers are likely fake. Subsequently, Hong Kong based broadcaster Edko has confessed to giving out more than 40 million free tickets for obligatory "public welfare screenings."
Released over the summer, the computer-generated fantasy romp Monster Hunt quickly became the highest-grossing Chinese-language film in China ever and went on to earn 2.43 billion yuan at the box office, outselling even the foreign box office record holder Furious 7 by 160,000 yuan.
The film's supposed triumph was partially the result of China's tough restrictions on international imports that lead to the film being screened for 59 days in comparison to just 47 days for Furious 7. Monster Hunt was also shown alongside minimal competition during the summer months.
Incidentally, during its run, CCTV reported instances of free screenings of the movie in suspiciously empty theaters.



Edko released statement on its Weibo page to reassure the public that it was "instituting serious criticism" to the employees at fault for the dubious occasions of so-called "public welfare screenings," which are really supposed to occur for the benefit of children, model workers and people with disabilities.
Such a controversy is particularly inconvenient in light of China's resolution to improve the accuracy of its box office auditing as part of a recent trade deal with the United States.
Still, compared to a certain other instance of suspected manipulation of ticket sales concerning the propagandist war epic The Hundred Regiments Offensive, a film about a child inheriting a mystical kingdom of monsters seems a comically mild form of box office fraud.
Here's the trailer for the movie that is rated a solid 6.3 out of 10 on IMDB:

By Pinky Latt
Contact the author of this article or email tips@shanghaiist.com with further questions, comments or tips.
By Shanghaiist in News on

[GeneChing]

CHINA’S BIGGEST BOX OFFICE HIT MONSTER HUNT GETS A US RELEASE AND TRAILER
POSTED BY DONNIE LEDERER ON DECEMBER 13, 2015

The highest grossing movie in Chinese box office history is getting a U.S. release this January, and they’ve released a trailer for it. We can be the first to tell you, it’s insane.

Monster Hunt is set in a mythical land that resembles ancient China. Monsters and humans co-exist in this world, and tensions are running high. When a child is born of a monster queen and a human, the baby, Wuba, must realize his destiny to become king and bring balance and peace to both races.

It seems like a simple plot to follow until you watch the actual trailer. The craziness lasts the entire 1 minute and 47 seconds. You have monsters revealing themselves after tearing off their human skin; you have sword fights; you have monster battles; you have a man giving birth to a four-armed baby monster. This seems more like a late night game of Cards Against Humanity instead of a film that grossed over 381 million dollars in China. Not only is it the highest grossing movie in Chinese history, it’s the first movie MADE in China to top the box office list in 21 years. With those stats to back it up, this movie is definitely worth a look.

Monster Hunt, directed by Raman Hui, will be released in the United States on January 22, 2016.

What do you think? Will you be checking out Monster Hunt next month?

I can't imagine this will have that wide of a U.S. release or appeal....

[GeneChing]

I can't imagine this will have that wide of a U.S. release or appeal....

Well, I guess we'll see this weekend.

Monster Hunt



IN THEATERS JANUARY 22



In a mythical ancient world, monsters rule the land while humans keep to their own kingdom. But when adorable baby monster Wuba is born to a human father and monster queen, mortals and creatures alike set out to capture the newborn, and Huba’s epic adventure begins.

The latest film from Raman Hui – whose animated work includes modern-day children’s classics “Shrek,” “Madagascar” and “Antz,” – “Monster Hunt” smashed box office records to become the highest grossing film in China’s history. FilmRise will release “Monster Hunt” in Mandarin with English subtitles and an English-language version.

THEATER LOCATIONS

United States – January 22nd:

Los Angeles
Atlantic Times Square TICKETS (Original subtitled version only)
Puente Hills 20 TICKETS (Original subtitled version only)
Burbank 8 TICKETS (English-language version only)
Orange 30 IMAX TICKETS (English-language version only)
Baldwin Hills 18 TICKETS (Original subtitled version only)

New York City
Empire 25 TICKETS (Both versions available)
Village East TICKETS (English-language version only)
College Point Multiplex TICKETS (Original subtitled version only)

San Francisco
Metreon 16 TICKETS (Both versions available)
Cine Grand TICKETS (Original subtitled version only)
San Jose Oakridge 20 TICKETS (English-language version only)
Great Mall 20 TICKETS (Both versions available)
Cupertino Square IMAX TICKETS (English-language version only)

Chicago
River East 21 TICKETS (Both versions available)

Houston
Studio 30 TICKETS (Original subtitled version only)
Gulf Pointe 30 IMAX TICKETS (English-language version only)

Seattle
Pacific Place 11 TICKETS (Original subtitled version only)

Boston
Boston Common 19 TICKETS (Original subtitled version only)

San Diego
La Jolla 12 TICKETS (Original subtitled version only)

Bloomington
Showplace 11 TICKETS (Original subtitled version only)

Washington DC
Rio 18 TICKETS (Original subtitled version only)
Rockville Centre 13 TICKETS (English-language version only)

Pittsburgh
Waterfront 22 TICKETS (Original subtitled version only)

Philadelphia
Cherry Hill 24 TICKETS (Original subtitled version only)

Pheonix
Centre Point 11 TICKETS (Original subtitled version only)

Columbus Ohio
Lennox Town Centre 24 TICKETS (Original subtitled version only)

Miami-Fort Lauderdale
Sunset Place TICKETS (Both versions available)
Aventura Mall 24 TICKETS (English-language version only)

Dallas/Fort Worth
Legacy 24 TICKETS (Original subtitled version only)
Stonebriar 24 TICKETS (English-language version only)

Orlando-Daytona Beach
Disney Springs 24 TICKETS (English-language version only)

Baltimore
Egyptian 24 TICKETS (Original subtitled version only)

Las Vegas
Century Orleans 18 TICKETS (Original subtitled version only)

Honolulu
Victoria Ward Stadium 16 TICKETS (English-language version only)

Atlanta
Hollywood 24 TICKETS (Original subtitled version only)
Plaza Theatre TICKETS (Original subtitled version only)


Canada – January 22nd:

Toronto
Cineplex Cinemas Markham & VIP TICKETS (Original subtitled version only)
Yonge & Dundas TICKETS (Original subtitled version only)

Vancouver
Silvercity Riverport TICKETS (Original subtitled version only)
Silvercity Metropolis TICKETS (Original subtitled version only)

Montreal
Odeon Montreal Forum TICKETS (Original subtitled version only)

Waterloo
Galaxy Waterloo TICKETS (Original subtitled version only)

[GeneChing]

I'm a little surprised that it has taken this long to start on this. After all, all the Hollywood movie merch is made in China.

China's Film Industry Targets Merchandising as New Revenue Stream
6:30 AM PDT 4/18/2016 by Patrick Brzeski


The producers of Chinese hit 'Monster Hunt' are developing movie merchandise for its upcoming sequels.
Courtesy of Edko Films

While China's box office is surging, the country's revenue from consumer products is just a trickle compared to Hollywood, but the local industry is looking to change that.

The explosive growth of China's box office is the envy of the global film industry. But amidst the country's surging ticket sales, many areas of China's entertainment sector still lag far behind Hollywood — none more so than movie merchandising.

Such was the consensus on Monday at the Beijing International Film Festival's first annual Chinese Film Merchandising Summit, which featured a panel of influential executives from both Chinese and Hollywood studios.

China's box office expanded 50 percent in the first quarter of 2016, and the country is projected to overtake North America as the world's largest theatrical territory next year.

But as Beijing's deputy mayor Li Shixiang pointed out during a keynote preceding the panel, 80 percent of China's film-related revenue comes from box office, whereas in North America, just 30 percent comes from ticket sales.

"The rest is made of up of derivative products," the deputy mayor said, adding: "It's very important for us to develop a merchandise industry ... Our hope is that not only the Chinese audience will know Iron Man and the Transformers, but families around the world will own figurines of the Monkey King and other Chinese characters."

As the seminar in Beijing on Monday laid bare, the Chinese industry has begun making efforts to bootstrap its nascent merchandising business. Last year, China Film Group, the country's dominant state-backed film enterprise, created a research institute for movie merchandising in collaboration with the Beijing Film Institute, which also added a movie merchandising major to its film studies programs.

Jeffrey Godsick, president of consumer products at 20th Century Fox, said he believes China's merchandising space will soon follow the explosive growth of the exhibition sector. He said he has made three trips to China so far this year as Fox is "spending a lot of time here looking for local partners."

"Chinese consumers want authenticity and they want real brands," Godsick said. "This is the most exciting moment in the history of merchandising in China, because you're starting at the beginning and you understand how important it is in the industry and you're taking it very seriously."

Jerry Ye, CEO of leading Chinese studio Huayi Brothers Pictures, agreed that the sector was important, but noted the considerable challenges Chinese studios still face in launching healthy merchandising divisions.

"Every country's toys are manufactured in China, so why can't we produce toys for our own films?" Ye asked. "The development of the IP industry must first have an environment of copyright protection to defend our IP from knock-offs," he explained. "Otherwise, these products will only be another form of promotion for the films, and not a very good form."

Once copyright protection is in place, Chinese studios will still require more time to develop strong franchises to build product lines around, Ye said. "We need to create our own super heroes," he said. "Your film first has to become very successful to be well-suited for merchandised products."

Some in the Chinese industry believe changes in local tastes and improvements in copyright enforcement have already created a viable marketplace for high-quality movie goods, provided that IP holders, manufacturers and retailers can make it as easy to acquire legitimate products as it is to get pirated products.

"Consumers' purchasing power has been growing rapidly and under these circumstances they are looking for great products and not just great films," said La Peking, chairman of China Film Group, adding: "Since 2015, the merchandising sector has been growing quickly.

Last year, Chinese media company Mtime, which runs a popular movie reviews site and a mobile ticketing service, partnered with real estate and investment conglomerate Dalian Wanda Group to launch over 50 brick-and-mortar stores in cinemas in 10 cities, laying the groundwork for a cross-country online-to-offline merchandise service. The company released a mobile app in December, making it possible for cinema chains to order licensed film goods directly to their theaters with a few clicks.

So far, Mtime's service has mostly trafficked in Hollywood merchandise, as Chinese production companies are just beginning to develop merchandise-able franchises to feed local demand.

In a video montage played during Monday's panel at the Beijing festival, Hong Kong director Raman Hui, director of China's second highest-grossing film ever, Monster Hunt ($385 million), noted how his film missed a merchandising opportunity during its wildly successful run in cinemas last July.

A live-action CGI adventure-fantasy featuring a color cast of monsters, the movie would indeed ripe for development into wildly popular toys. "A lot of people were making bad knock-offs and there was not much we could do, because we didn't make any merchandise for the first film," Hui said. "At that time, I said to my boss, 'we should have started this years ago'."

The boss in question was Hong Kong super-producer Bill Kong, chairman of Edko Films, who was among Monday's panelists.

"Before a film comes into reality, how do you know it will become popular?" Kong said. "At the beginning of Monster Hunt, we went to McDonald's and KFC [to talk about some merchandising] and they didn't take us seriously — the talks went nowhere."

Kong said a sequel to Monster Hunt, again directed by Hui, a DreamWorks Animation veteran, will be released in the summer of 2018, followed by a third film at a later date.

"We'll be paying more attention to merchandising in the future," Kong said.

[GeneChing]

Chinese New Year Box Office Preview: 'Monster Hunt 2' Hits $11M in Presales
11:31 PM PST 2/1/2018 by Patrick Brzeski


Courtesy of Edko Films
Chris Lee in 'Monster Hunt 2'

THR takes a sneak-peak at the coming wave of Chinese blockbusters, which are already raking in major revenue.
The world's biggest box-office season — Chinese New Year, in China — is still two weeks away, but the country's unreleased blockbusters are already sucking up revenue before liftoff.

Fantasy sequel Monster Hunt 2, directed by DreamWorks Animation veteran Raman Hui, had reached $11.3 million (70.6 million RMB) in ticket presales by midday Friday. With a full 14 days before its opening on Feb. 16, the film should easily surpass the $16 million (101 million RMB) in presales raked in by Chen Kaige's Journey to the West: The Demons Strike Back, last year's CNY opening-weekend winner.

In February 2016, China set a new record for the biggest box-office week ever for a single market, totaling $548 million in ticket sales over seven days. That tally cleanly eclipsed the record set in North America just weeks prior by Star Wars: The Force Awakens ($529.6 million from Dec. 26 to Jan. 1, 2016).

Whether the market can match those heights this year remains an open question. What's certain is that the field will be very crowded, with fantasy monsters, prat-falling detectives, animated bears and military propaganda all vying for a slice of the enormous pie.

The first Monster Hunt movie grossed $382 million in 2015, an all-time record at the time. Production company Edko Films has pulled out all of the stops for the sequel, more than doubling the number of visual effects shots, boosting merchandising output and marketing alliances, and adding veteran star Tony Leung to the cast. Hui's touch for family-friendly entertainment — an essential ingredient for success during the very family-focused holiday, when grandparents to kids all decamp for the multiplex — would seem the key to the film's clear frontrunner status (during his Hollywood days, Hui co-directed DWA hits like Shrek the Third).

Currently sitting in second place for holiday presales is Wanda Pictures' action comedy Detective Chinatown 2, with $6.7 million (42.3 million RMB). The first film, set in the Chinatown district of Bangkok, Thailand, earned $125 million in 2015. The sequel is again written and directed by Chen Sicheng, and stars returning leads Wang Baoqiang and Liu Haoran. But this time the action has been transplanted to Chinatown in New York City, and the cast is joined by American actor Michael Pitt.

Chinese New Year wouldn't be complete without a Monkey King movie or two, and 2018 will welcome the third of its kind from director Cheang Pou-soi. Aaron Kwok is back as the eponymous simian hero of the beloved Chinese literary classic. The film will attempt to best the $167.8 million and $185.4 million earned by The Monkey King (2014) and Monkey King 2 (2016), respectively. Thus far, the movie has brought in $5.7 million (36.2 million RMB) in advance sales.

Boonie Bears: The Big Shrink, the fifth film in China's most successful homegrown animation franchise, currently sits in fourth place with $2.9 million (18.4 million RMB). Based on a long-running China Central Television animated series of the same name, the first four Boonie Bears films have totaled an estimated $221.5 million. The new film can be expected to carve out a healthy chuck of the holiday kids market.

The final major title opening on Feb. 16, head-to-head against the other market leaders, is Hong Kong director Dante Lam's Operation Red Sea, which was designed to tap into the same upswell of Chinese patriotism that lifted Wu Jing's Wolf Warrior 2 to previously unimaginable heights last summer ($874 million from the China market alone).

The film stars Zhang Yi and Huang Jingyu, and is loosely based on the Chinese navy evacuation of 225 foreign nationals and some 600 Chinese citizens from Yemen's port of Aden during the 2015 Yemeni Civil War last March. Continuing the growing industry trend of blending propaganda with commercial filmmaking polish, Operation Red Sea is being presented as a special tribute to the 90th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese People Liberation Army (August, 1927). The film has tallied $1.4 million (9 million RMB) in presales so far.

Thread: 2018 Year of the EARTH DOG
Thread: Monster Hunt
Thread: Detective Chinatown 2 (唐人街探案2)
Thread: Monkey King 3

I gotta go with MK3. I doubt that will win the box office - MH2 probably will - but that's my fav of these two franchises. I haven't seen DC yet so maybe that's a premature assumption, but I've got a soft spot for anything Monkey King related, a veritable monkey on my back.

[GeneChing]

Detective Chinatown 2.

‘Detective Chinatown 2’ Defeats “Monster Hunt 2” On Day 3 Of Chinese New Year
BY LINAN CHEN FEB 19, 2018


“Detective Chinatown 2” Defeats “Monster Hunt 2” On Day 3 Of Chinese New Year

The first three days of Chinese New Year saw box office earnings reach an accumulated 3.21 billion yuan ($501 million) with the weekend box office earnings totaling at over 500 million, breaking the record for highest weekend box office in a single market. Detective Chinatown 2 overtook Monster Hunt 2 as the box office winner on the third day of Chinese New Year. Action film Red Sea Operation followed right behind in third place, bringing in 179 million yuan ($28 million) on Feb. 18; the film is also highly rated on review sites, with a rating of 7.4/10 on Mtime. Monkey King 3 and Boonie Bears: The Big Shrink each gained about 60 million yuan ($9.3 million)

Thread: 2018 Year of the EARTH DOG
Thread: Monster Hunt
Thread: Detective Chinatown 2 (唐人街探案2)
Thread: Monkey King 3

[GeneChing]

I caught MH2 on a flight on the way to Paris two weeks ago. It began and ended with Bollywood numbers. Wuba, the baby radish yao who looks like the Pillsbury doughboy with four tentacles as arms, gets caught lost. Demon hunters search for him, but he gets picked up by a gambler con artist (Tony Leung) and his accomplice Benben (dumbdumb), full-grown radish demon. It was a little better than the first one for me because I've got a better grasp of how they are depicting the yao world. But it's not much better. Not recommended. This franchise can end now (but it probably won't).