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A Marvel Fanboy

China Box Office Thread | Oppenheimer-August 30

By A Marvel Fanboy, in China At The Box Office

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Bob Violence Sleeper Hit

Bob Violence

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Posted (edited)

I don't understand where is the problem in getting "only" 10% of the showings... in the rest of the World Frozen had so much less than that in many countries because there are many movies on the theatres at the same time, and it did huge business... 10% means 1 screen in a 10 screens multiplex or 2 in a 20 screens one. That's the usual. Or am I wrong?

 

I'm going to use this point to go off on a rant that I've been thinking about for awhile. This probably isn't a popular opinion here, but I can't get too upset about the treatment of Hollywood films in China when most non-Hollywood imports would probably kill for 10% of the screenings. Hollywood films are mainstream in China—certain Hollywood stars as big here as they are anywhere, Hollywood is covered by major news outlets, and successful Chinese films are often derivative of Hollywood models (Lost in Thailand, Finding Mr. Right, hell, even The Monkey King is really just a shitty attempt at giving the Hollywood blockbuster treatment to traditional Chinese subject matter). Complaining about China because Frozen isn't getting the same treatment as The Monkey King (or DM2 a month ago) is like complaining about China because Burger King doesn't have better market share than McDonald's and Dico's. Meanwhile the business and regulatory environment in China means there are few (in most cities, no) venues for alternative cinema. There aren't even enough screens in the country to fulfill demand for mainstream films, so who's gonna stick their neck out to build "arthouses"?

Of course, if China did have an arthouse circuit, it'd need movies. Chinese "art" films sometimes defy the odds and get distribution—usually of the blink-and-you'll-miss-it kind, with release patterns that can seem downright random (here in Qingdao, the theater that screened Beijing Flickers wasn't the same theater that screened The Love Songs of Tiedan, which wasn't the same theater that screened Useless, which wasn't the same theater that screened Beloved). But the volume of imports is restricted by the regulators, so distributors naturally gravitate towards safe lowest-common-denominator titles. A lot of the non-Hollywood imports released here are just bald imitations of Hollywood films, like the recent Metro and Niko 2, and even those tend to get buried. If you really want to get your film released in China, you should probably make it in English with Hollywood actors (cf. The Impossible, Upside Down, innumerable EuropaCorp titles). But I don't blame the distributors for their conservatism, because the regulatory environment encourages it, the exhibition sector isn't set up to support "art" films, and when one does manage to slip through (like A Separation), it has to wind its way through the release queue and then disappears as soon as it opens.

I think ultimately this will work itself out. Import restrictions will be loosened over the long term; as the number of mainstream cinemas begins to keep pace with demand, theater operators will begin cultivating alternative/niche audiences. I recall firedeep predicting that a proper arthouse circuit will be viable by the end of the decade. I certainly hope so. And I'm not saying any of this to be judgmental—it's just a description. I'm not claiming that China is deliberately suppressing foreign art cinema because theaters in rural Anhui don't show Aleksandr Sokurov movies, but at the same time nobody pretends that imports in China are decided by the market alone, so policy is obviously a factor. The current environment definitely favors Chinese films over Hollywood films, but it also definitely favors Hollywood films over every other kind of foreign cinema, and not only because Hollywood movies are more popular.

Edited by Bob Violence
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