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Mandy Zuo

Film fans on the mainland – who spent a total of 44 billion yuan (HK$52 billion) on cinema tickets last year – seem to have tightened their belts recently.
While the number of cinema screens on the mainland grows by more than 20 each day, its box office has moved in the opposition direction over the past two months.
Statistics suggested a 24 per cent fall in April’s box office revenue from the same period last year, and May continued to witness negative growth from a year earlier.
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Poor quality and lack of novelty of home-made films are the top reason for the disappointing performance, industry insiders and viewers say. The sector is generally seen as a promising one for China.
Domestic film makers brought to the market five animated movies ahead of Children’s Day on June 1, but none has earned more than 6 million yuan.

But two imported ones shown in the same period – T he Angry Birds Movie and Alice Through the Looking Glass – had made 488 million yuan and 349 million yuan respectively as of Thursday.
“It’s not that the audience don’t like to go to cinemas anymore, but we’re becoming pickier,” said a Shanghai film fan Ma Yao.
“People were fooled last year. They can’t be possibly cheated again this year,” he said.
China’s box office ballooned by more than 48 per cent last year, mainly driven by home-made films. Monster Hunt, a Chinese-Hong Kong fantasy action comedy film, was the biggest winner with box office revenue of over 2.4 billion yuan.
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Zheng Dawei, secretary general of Guangdong Motion Picture Industry Association, said the biggest problem for Chinese films was that directors were poor at story telling and confined to certain subjects.
“There are so many directors graduating from universities and colleges specialising in filming each year, but sadly most of the domestic movies that have made profits turned out not to be directed by these professionals, but people who started as actors or actresses,” said Zheng.
“These influential and lucrative ones are almost all of the same type – comedy,” he said.
Zheng, a censor for Guangdong’s movie industry watchdog, said mainland authorities issued permits for over 300 Chinese movies last year, but less than 15 per cent managed to make profit.
There has been speculation that authorities’ crackdown on phantom screenings and fake sales recently could be another reason for the drop in box office sales.

The latest film to come under suspicion of such practices was martial arts flick Ip Man 3, starring Donnie Yen and Mike Tyson. Investigators said in March that the film’s main distributor had bought 56 million yuan worth of tickets itself to bolster box office numbers and that a distributor fabricated more than 7,600 screenings.
The distributor’s operation was suspended for one month, but no other concrete punishment was imposed.
Zheng said the government had been lenient towards those perpetrating such frauds and the impact had not been big enough to affect the overall box office figures.
Lau Ding Kin, a Hong Kong comics publisher and film director, agreed the crackdown by authorities was not a main reason for the drop, saying instead it had been caused by the hurdles Chinese film makers faced from censorship.
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“The Chinese movie market may have more limitations than any other country in the world,” said Lau.
The limitations are mainly imposed on themes and content, ranging from gangster movies to political dramas and thrillers.
“The result is certain: the good days for Chinese movie will be short. Soon there will be bitterness and silence,” he said.
Despite the growing reluctance to spend on domestic films, cinema operators are still opening more outlets. Last year more than 1,200 new cinemas opened on the mainland, adding more than 8,000 new screens to the market, official data indicated.
All this could lead to a collapse in the coming years, Lau warned – the industry had been growing at a pace of at least 30 per cent for the past 11 years, he said.


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Chinese language cinema

Chinese film fans tighten belts as domestic movies disappoint

Monster Hunt, released last year, took more than 2.4 billion yuan - but more recent Chinese offerings have been disappointing. File photo