China Box Office Thread | Oppenheimer-August 30

[Issac Newton]

Conditional Statement:

How much did North America has added to foreign production? I don't see any Chinese Film adding much now while doing decades back (pre-2005) when Chinese market was small.

 

Flop Movies? I don't see The Batman, Uncharted, Fantastic Beast 3, even Moonfall as flop movies. Now, Moonfall has added more than Uncharted (Tastes varies across continents)

 

Don't bet on Dr Strange, it's on review.

[ImNotRacistAtAll]

6 minutes ago, Issac Newton said:

Conditional Statement:

How much did North America has added to foreign production? I don't see any Chinese Film adding much now while doing decades back (pre-2005) when Chinese market was small.

 

Flop Movies? I don't see The Batman, Uncharted, Fantastic Beast 3, even Moonfall as flop movies. Now, Moonfall has added more than Uncharted (Tastes varies across continents)

 

Don't bet on Dr Strange, it's on review.

Why wouldn't I bet? It's not like No Way Home, Black Widow or Venom 2 (or even Morbius) got a release there. These were unproblematic movies in China terms. I think so. Like, why give Matrix a date on January 14th,a movie destined to flop and doing way less than other movies, instead of NWH? hi

 

What are these distribution decisions? 

Why release movies that are on pvod for quite a bit? Isn't the main objective to make money? Some of the most eye rolling decisions in 2021.

 

Yeah... 2022 looks brighter. Just not for Marvel. I guess. And I wonder if they will release Aquaman and Avatar there. If they don't, I think the picture gets very clearer. So let's see. 

 

 

 

 

[Issac Newton]

I don't see your point of view. We have Japanese film releasing after 40 years still earning 3-4x more than homeland release. Even, Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away still earn $71M after 18 years of homeland release. When a film has an honest fanbase, there is no doubt that they can still earn a lot in later releases.

 

30 minutes ago, ImNotRacistAtAll said:

Why release movies that are on pvod for quite a bit?

Honestly, VOD, PVOD &Piracy doesn't give a shot about these. WOM is the key, there are people who are interested in watching the film in big screen. Your comparison with Matrix Resurrection was really a bad one. It doesn't even have good reviews to hold any legs here let alone being HBO Max on December. It didn't even reach Opening Weekend (2-days) of previous films as finals in Japan

 

For example, A Rainy Day in New York failed to spread WOM ending with ¥12.7M, but Japanese Film "We Made A Beautiful Bouquet" made more than ¥89M, though originally predicted to end on ¥20M.

 

33 minutes ago, ImNotRacistAtAll said:

instead of NWH?

Mock Chinese Production &TBALC as Chinese propaganda is equivalent enough to rage up decision in releasing a product which already included Persona grata cast (Shang Chi and Eternal). Venom lead cast previous anti-Chinese comments.... more and more issues in Marvel production.

 

First of all, Everyone should respect each and every language production. It's really unfair that film earning money is propaganda. I never heard Hollywood works reaching success as propaganda.

 

Whatever, end of Marvel release (as assumed by you) doesn't mean that Cinemas in China will die. Every work has its potential to draw audience back to theatres, and if you think that The Batman, Uncharted and Fantastic Beast are flopping then you are really wrong about it, considering CoVid-19 affecting the box office.

[fabiopazzo2]

before it was fun to follow as a market.
today is boring

[TigerPaw]

44 minutes ago, fabiopazzo2 said:

before it was fun to follow as a market.
today is boring

60% of the cinemas are closed. What do you expect?

 

Plus the run of some of the local films last year was great to follow; such as Raging Fire and Battle of Lake Changjin part 1.

 

Box office is not just about Hollywood films..

Edited April 9, 2022 by TigerPaw

[ImNotRacistAtAll]

1 hour ago, TigerPaw said:

60% of the cinemas are closed. What do you expect?

 

Plus the run of some of the local films last year was great to follow; such as Raging Fire and Battle of Lake Changjin part 1.

 

Box office is not just about Hollywood films..

I understand your feeling but most people here only care how much Hollywood movies make in China. 

 

MOST. Not all. 

[SchumacherFTW]

The market for Chinese movies being dead right now as well does put this thread on life support for a while 😅

[peludo]

9 minutes ago, ImNotRacistAtAll said:

I understand your feeling but most people here only care how much Hollywood movies make in China. 

 

MOST. Not all. 

That is the real sad thing

[LeoC]

5 hours ago, ImNotRacistAtAll said:

Regarding China ban of the big Hollywood movies... here's what I don't get. 

 

What is China main goal with all of this? Is it to have the biggest movie of the year be one of theirs? Or just be the biggest market in the world? Or both? 

 

Because biggest movie of the year is just something they don't have range to. Hollywood will always have the biggest movie of the year in normal years. They should just drop that thought, if it's one they have. 

 

Now, to be the biggest market in the world? Like in 2021?? That's something entirely possible till the end of times. But here's what I don't understand. How they want to be the biggest market in the world without the huge Hollywood blockbusters income? They could have led 2021 by an even bigger margin. 2021 was a weak year still. Recovery and experimenting one. Hollywood is coming back strong this year. And big ones are yet to come. 

 

Am I missing something? The money made in China by Hollywood movies count as China gross in the end of the year right? 

 

So why not release the big blockbusters? Why are they releasing flops? 

 

And I know everything is fucked there right now so whatever. But even before the covid outbreak. Specially before the new covid outbreak. 

 

Because I can tell you all right now, and I would bet my bank account on this, Doctor Strange will never get a release date there. No matter how bad things are, they are still running everything with what's open. 

 

Genuine questions because I don't know much. Is there anything going on China? What is China main goal in the movie market? 

 

 

That's the million dollar question that no body knows the answer to, my friend. As a Hollywood fan from China, I find this frustrating af. 

[The GOAT]

4 hours ago, ImNotRacistAtAll said:

Why wouldn't I bet? It's not like No Way Home, Black Widow or Venom 2 (or even Morbius) got a release there. These were unproblematic movies in China terms. I think so. Like, why give Matrix a date on January 14th,a movie destined to flop and doing way less than other movies, instead of NWH? hi

 

What are these distribution decisions? 

Why release movies that are on pvod for quite a bit? Isn't the main objective to make money? Some of the most eye rolling decisions in 2021.

 

Yeah... 2022 looks brighter. Just not for Marvel. I guess. And I wonder if they will release Aquaman and Avatar there. If they don't, I think the picture gets very clearer. So let's see. 

 

 

 

 

The governing film body are filmbros who believe Marvel is corruption of the mind, body, and soul. 

[Olive]

The cinemas are all closed in my city because of several new covid19 cases since two years ago.

[BruiseCruise]

Marvel got banned most likely cause of Liu/Zhao,they let other Disney stuff in( free guy, Encanto, jungle cruise) avatar got a re-release their just last summer so it will surely get one for the sequel. 

 

 

[Issac Newton]

15 minutes ago, The GOAT said:

The governing film body are filmbros who believe Marvel is corruption of the mind, body, and soul. 

... and we can purify ourselves by watching patriotic films like TBALC twice a week (jokes)

[xieh tie]

The Hit New Film Pushing Chinese Sci-Fi Into Unexplored Territory

 

In Kong Dashan’s hit new movie “Journey to the West,” the aliens aren’t hiding in the corn fields of the U.S. Midwest. They’re lurking in the villages of northern China. 

 

The film has become a sensation on the festival circuit in recent months by offering audiences something rarely seen before: a science fiction tale with a distinctly local flavor. 

Tang Zhijun, a middle-aged magazine editor from Beijing, travels to a remote village to investigate the mass sighting of an unidentified flying object. There, he meets a local poet who says the answer to the mystery lies at a distant mountain.  

 

As the tension mounts, the pair embark on a road trip that turns into a journey of self-discovery. It’s a quirky, often comic narrative that echoes the original “Journey to the West,” the classic Chinese novel about the monk Tang Sanzang’s quest to retrieve the Buddhist scriptures from India.

 

Last October, the film scooped an unprecedented four awards — including best film — at the Pingyao International Film Festival, China’s leading platform for independent cinema. It has since played overseas at the International Film Festival Rotterdam and the Osaka Asian Film Festival to more acclaim. 

 

 

 

With a Chinese theatrical release pending, film industry insiders say the buzz building around the feature is palpable. Kong, the film’s 32-year-old director, says the movie’s low-budget, down-to-earth style has proved to be an asset.

“We have given people science fiction within a story that might feel familiar to aspects of their own lives,” says Kong. “That is something new.” 

 

Leading figures in China’s science fiction scene have hailed “Journey to the West” as a step forward for the industry — and a sign it’s finally ready to step out of the shadow of star author Liu Cixin.

Chinese sci-fi has skyrocketed in popularity in recent years, propelled by the breakout success of Liu’s “The Three-Body Problem.”

 

The novel, which transcends time and space as it charts humanity’s war against an alien civilization, became a global sensation after winning the prestigious Hugo Award in 2015.

The Chinese government, once wary of sci-fi movies, began to actively embrace the genre as a soft power tool over the following years. This has opened the door for a string of big-budget science fiction productions, many of them drawing inspiration from Liu’s work.

 

In 2019, “The Wandering Earth” — an adaptation of a Liu novella about a group of astronauts trying to save the planet from destruction — became a box office smash, generating 4.4 billion yuan (then $638 million) in ticket sales and winning a slew of local awards.

 

Other Chinese sci-fi films to attract big audiences that year included the wacky comedy “Crazy Alien” — also based on a story by Liu — and the special effects-heavy alien invasion movie “Shanghai Fortress.” 

Though the pandemic has caused major disruptions to film production in China, a big-budget sequel to “The Wandering Earth” is set for release in 2023. Streaming giants Tencent and Netflix, meanwhile, are currently putting the finishing touches on a TV adaptation of “The Three-Body Problem.” 

 

Liu continues to loom large over China’s sci-fi scene. His style of fiction — speculative, epic in scale, and informed by hard science — has influenced an entire generation of Chinese writers. 

“Currently, I see a lot of physics, astronomy, and space — natural science stuff,” says Chen Qiufan, a leading sci-fi author and honorary president of the Chinese Science Fiction Writers’ Association. “It’s pretty much like America back in the ’50s. Like (Isaac) Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, those ‘golden-age’ authors.” 

 

 

 

“Maybe in the future, there’ll be something different,” he says. “I might also do some exploration myself to connect with some ancient Chinese philosophy and mythology … so the work is using a different kind of language.” 

 

Filmmaker Kong appears to be ahead of the game. “Journey to the West” turns on the travails of its relatable main character and his search for answers: not only about what might lie in the great beyond, but also about how his own life has panned out. 

It’s a work that comes steeped in the traditional themes found in science fiction, such as the search for redemption and humanity’s fascination with the possibility of extra-terrestrial life. Kong says his inspiration came from the hours he spent poring over sci-fi magazines as a child growing up in 1990s Shandong, a province in eastern China. 

 

“My generation all grew up reading science fiction magazines, books about unknown mysteries,” says Kong. “If we think carefully about what aliens represent, it’s actually another kind of system, totally different from human beings’ existence.” 

 

 

 

As opposed to Liu Cixin, whose work is often compared to the “golden age” sci-fi authors of the 1940s and ’50s, Kong’s work shows faint echoes of more recent classics. The central character — played by veteran actor Yang Haoyu — is fixated with outer space while his real life on terra firma falls apart, much like the protagonist in Steven Spielberg’s 1977 masterpiece “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” As in that film, too, there’s a journey of discovery that’s as personal as it is otherworldly.  

But there are also sly nods to arguably the greatest road trip of all — the one taken by Tang Sanzang and his three disciples in the original “Journey to the West.” In Kong's feature, however, the characters’ quest for fulfillment is rooted in a firmly contemporary setting. 

 

“In both that book and my film, you have characters looking for the ultimate answers in life,” says Kong. “I think this comes from the influence of ‘Journey to the West’ subconsciously. It’s a road trip, but inside it’s also his own mental journey. I think it’s necessary to have this kind of journey in science fiction.” 

 

 

 

The hope is that more Chinese filmmakers find opportunities to experiment with science fiction over the next few years. Chen, the author, says the outlook for Chinese sci-fi has never looked better, especially given the government’s embrace of the genre. 

“There have been themes of science fiction in China for about 100 years, but they’ve not been continuously developed because of wars or due to political reasons,” says Chen. “But (now) seems to be a golden age because it’s top-down. We have got a lot of support from the government and, also, the market is ready.” 

 

Chinese authorities are pouring resources into science -fiction-related projects. Next year, the southwestern city of Chengdu will host the influential World Science Fiction Convention. Officials have greenlit a massive $8 billion Paramount Park theme park in Kunming, another city in southwest China, which will include a zone themed around the “Star Trek” franchise.

In 2019, the government also helped launch the Chinese Science Fiction Academy at Chengdu’s Sichuan University, a facility whose stated mission is to develop “a sci-fi theoretical system with Chinese characteristics.” Last year, researchers estimated that China’s sci-fi industry was worth a massive 36.3 billion yuan in the first half of 2021.

 

 

The scene is also benefitting from the growing demand for sci-fi movies among young Chinese, Chen says. Unlike previous generations, who often didn’t have easy access to science fiction, Chinese millennials like Kong grew up immersed in sci-fi culture. 

“So many in the younger generation are so passionate about sci-fi as a genre, no matter if it’s literature, movies, or video games,” says Chen. “I think that’s been a fundamental change, because in the ’80s, or even in the ’50s and ’60s, maybe people weren’t ready yet for science fiction.” 

 

https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1010076/the-hit-new-film-pushing-chinese-sci-fi-into-unexplored-territory?source=chanel_deep

[Issac Newton]

Fantastic Beasts 3 : ~¥63M /$9.9M (3-days)

 

For Comparison (OW):

The Batman : ¥74.6M /$11.7M (3-days)

Uncharted : ¥65.5M /$10.3M (7-days)

Moonfall : ¥61.9M /$9.7M (3-days)

Edited April 10, 2022 by Issac Newton

[keysersoze123]

With the way China is trying to control COVID, I am expecting the market to be impacted for a while. I will fear for Jurassic World Dominion(what a ridiculous title !!!). I expect that movie to get a release date but BO to be impacted big time. Hopefully things settle down by the time Avatar 2 opens. 

[poweranimals]

On 4/9/2022 at 12:36 PM, The GOAT said:

The governing film body are filmbros who believe Marvel is corruption of the mind, body, and soul. 

Is filmbros the Chinese equivillent of Geeks and Gamers? 😜

[Issac Newton]

WK: April 8-10, 2022 (Fri-Sun)

Ranking based on WK Revenue

1️⃣ Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore : ¥61.07M /¥62.10M 🆕

2️⃣ Hotel Transylvania 4 : ¥8.72M /¥39.88M (-23%)

3️⃣ Escape Room 2 : ¥6.02M /¥33.28M (-49%)

4️⃣ Moonfall : ¥5.77M /¥124.30M (-70%)

5️⃣ Man On The Edge : ¥4.11M /¥25.11M (-58%)

6️⃣ The Batman : ¥3.72M /¥139.26M (-52%)

7️⃣ Uncharted : ¥3.03M /¥109.99M (-53%)

8️⃣ Water Gate Bridge : ¥2.25M /¥4055.38M (-48%)

9️⃣ Too Cool To Kill : ¥0.83M /¥2621.22M (-68%)

🔟 Oops! The Adventures Continues : ¥0.71M /¥0.81M 🆕

 

Fantastic Beasts 3 Actual came lower with $9.75M /¥62.10M (which includes ¥1.03M /$160K). Our Target should be ¥130M+ /$20.4M+ ending.

 

German production &2019 film "Oops The Adventure Continues" open on 10th. Grossing $130K /¥810K. Among the remaining, Hotel Transylvania 4 enjoyed the lowest drop (23%) though it has opened only on Sunday on it's OW.

[Brainbug]

11 hours ago, keysersoze123 said:

With the way China is trying to control COVID, I am expecting the market to be impacted for a while. I will fear for Jurassic World Dominion(what a ridiculous title !!!). I expect that movie to get a release date but BO to be impacted big time. Hopefully things settle down by the time Avatar 2 opens. 

 

I share that fear for JW. Looking at places like Shanghai, the whole of China could be under lockdown in May or June. I hope im wrong on this.

[Issac Newton]

Friday Estimates

#1 Man On The Edge : ¥4.6M (¥29.7M)

#2 Fantastic Beasts 3 : ¥3.7M (¥77.9M)

#3 Hotel Transylvania 4 : ¥0.9M (¥43.5M)

#4 Escape Room 2 : ¥0.8M (¥37.8M)

#5 Mon Inconnue : ¥0.7M (¥1.2M)

 

Others

Drishyam : ¥0.87M , Moonfall : ¥127.7M , The Batman : ¥141.4M , Uncharted : ¥112M