2013 was a particularly interesting year for Chinese cinema; just six months into the year, Chinese films proved to have an overwhelming supremacy over imported features, mainly from Hollywood. That Chinese films keep having success at the box office is a fact, and this is certainly the best stimulus for the industry and for the film market, which is growing at a fast pace. Despite the many restrictions still in place, it still allows directors, producers, distributors and the entire star system to see their dreams become a reality.
Out of the top 50 box office earners of 2013, 25 were Chinese productions. Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons by Stephen Chow took the top spot with US$206.28 million of takings, a co-production between China and Hong Kong, distributed by Hua Yi Brothers Media. So Young, a behind-the-camera debut by the actress Vicky Zhao Wei, distributed by Beijing Enlight Pictures, was close behind, with takings of US$118.78 million, while the franchise experiment, Young Detective Dee: Rise of the Sea Dragon by Tsui Hark, made by Film Workshop in Hong Kong, co-produced and distributed by the colossus Hua Yi Brothers Media, totalled US$99.17 million. Personal Tailor with its takings of US$95.57 million, produced and distributed by Huayi Brothers Media, marked a return to comedy for Feng Xiaogang, the bestloved director in China.
Then there were the co-productions: American Dreams in China by Hong Kong director Peter Ho-sun Chan, produced by his We Pictures and distributed by Beijing Enlight Pictures, took US$89.03 million. Finding Mr. Right by Xue Xiaolu (Udine FEFF 15), another China/Hong Kong co-production, distributed by Edko Films, earned US$85.91 million and Tiny Times 1.0, a directing debut by Guo Jingming, a young author of best-sellers in his home country, a co-production between China and Taiwan, co-produced by Desen International Media and Star Ritz Productions, distributed by Le Vision Pictures, with its takings of US$80.45 million beat Alfonso Cuàron’s Gravity.
These are the seven Chinese titles in the top 10 box office in China last year, a sign that local productions are improving their promotion and marketing methods, making them more efficient and allowing them to compete, at least in their home country, with Hollywood, despite the latter having a bigger wow-factor in terms of stories and special effects. If we take into consideration the top 20 hits of the year, there are only eight local productions, of which four are co-productions with Hong Kong and one with Taiwan. The other twelve are all from Hollywood: Iron Man 3, Pacific Rim, Gravity, Fast & Furious 6, Superman: Man of Steel, The Croods, Skyfall, Star Trek Into the Darkness, Jurassic Park, Thor: The Dark World, G.I. Joe: Retaliation, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.
US productions are still going strong, their fame and confirmed popularity preceding them. The results at the box office prove that Chinese production companies and distributors are making vital headway into the market, becoming increasing powerful players in various sectors of business and communications. Hua Yi Brothers Media and Beijing Enlight Pictures, the only two film companies to be quoted on the Chinese stock market, Le Vision Pictures, Bona Films Group and Wanda Media as well as the historic China Film Group, are all now titans in the Chinese film industry. And numbers count in the second biggest market after the USA.
In 2013, 638 films were produced in China, a lesser number than the previous year’s 745. The number of films that were able to hit the Chinese big screens was 305, but that figure includes films that were only shown for single day, ironically dubbed “The One-Day-Tour” films.
The overall box office takings for 2013 were over US$3.5 billion an increase of 25.92 per cent compared to 2012, of which 2 billion was from Chinese films. The upsurge in takings was also thanks to the fact that last year saw an increase in the number of cinema screens in cities of second, third and fourth level of size; it has been calculated that there are ten to twelve new screens per day, numbering a total of 18,195 screens in the entire country, 5,077 more than in 2012.
It is also worthy of note that 45 locally produced films were exported abroad, resulting in takings of around US$230 million. However, no film made in 2013 beat the results obtained by Xu Zheng’s Lost in Thailand, the top earner of 2012 with takings of one billion, 247,300 million, 300 thousand Yuan, produced on a budget of 30 million Yuan, which brought 38 million people to the cinema. It is the highest grosser in the history of Chinese cinema, second only, in absolute terms, to James Cameron’s Avatar.
How the market should be regulated in this escalation of more cinemas, more screens, and therefore more spectators, in order to better manage the enormous growth of the market, was one of the recurring questions of 2013.
Because the success at the box office of local productions produces staggering figures, but the strategies behind this success remain ambiguous. These include the government protectionist policies, which are confirmed and reinforced, from blackouts in certain favourable periods of the year, like national holidays, in which foreign films cannot be distributed, and financial incentives offered to cinema chains (tax rebates of five per cent) if a locally- produced film reaches a pre-established target at the box office, something that encourages more cinemas to give space and visibility to Chinese films.
The number of imported films, based on share revenue, remains at 34, while the number of films imported on a flat fee basis varies from year to year. The logic of the choice of imported films to be distributed in China remains the same: money making. A play of strength is inevitable, the battle takes place on two fronts: on the one side, obtaining as much visibility on the screens as possible and, on the other, the promotion and communication with a public that is unpredictable but increasingly segmented.
The success of Chinese-made films, on the one hand, reinforces the industry, greatly helping to define the genres that define today’s popular cinema, and on the other, causes much debate about the prevalence of its commercial elements. If cinema has always been a mirror of the culture of a society, the paucity of content in many films today causes criticism, giving succour to the idea that cinema is merely another form of commerce, a new display unit to sell products. And, unfortunately, this all happens with the blessing of the stars of national cinema, who evermore frequently are willing to lend their names to films of guaranteed commercial success, rather than to riskier films with more demanding content.
If Lost in Thailand remains the most successful film in China, it is also true that its 38 million spectators is just a drop in the ocean to China’s potential viewing public, and the top films at the Chinese box office is made up solely of commercial exploits. The offer is limited and reserved to a certain type of film that can potentially attract a public of all ages, due to the lack of a classification system, but the truth is that the public is mainly made up of 13 to 25-year-olds. The content of the films, therefore, is almost exclusively aimed at this age group, which communicates its preferences, comments and criticism via the internet; the earnings at the box office can depend enormously on this type of participation.
Many films have been at the heart of the debate which began in the press and in the media with the release of Lost In Thailand in 2012, criticized for the inconsistency of its storyline, bringing rise to the phenomenon of “观 众 口碑不佳, 但票房成绩好”, translated as “a bad reputation with the public, but high earnings at the box office”.
Amongst the most debated films last year were American Dreams in China, So Young, Badge of Fury, Switch and, upon its summer release, Tiny Times 1.
2013 will be remembered for the phenomenon of ‘Tiny Times 1 and 2’, a sensational feat in directing by the young best-selling author Guo Jingming, a popular idol for Chinese youth, as well as being a businessman and owner of a publishing company. The two-part film took a total of around 800 million Yuan, equal to US$130 million The film follows the success of the serial publications of the original novella of the same name, written and published from 2008, aimed at twenty-somethings, the generation born after 1985. The debate which raged for weeks mainly took place on social networks in posts from critics, the director himself and rabid fans. The biggest surprise was the articles published in the Ren Min Ri Bao (The Newspaper of the People), the Communist Party’s official organ: they invited the public to be wary of the superficial, consumerist content found in the film. This was the cherry on the cake, which sent the public racing to the cinema to see what the fuss was about.
TV and the internet are increasingly present in films. Le Vision Pictures, the film production company of the online video portal LeTV, which distributed Tiny Times 1-2, defines itself as more of a marketing company than a distributor.
Its strength lies in knowing how to analyse the market based on information generated by social networks such as weibo and renren. The new media has become the battleground to promote films; indeed, the Le Vision Pictures key words are abbreviated in the slogan SoLoMo (Social, Local, Mobile). Enlight Media, which distributed Lost in Thailand, So Young, American Dreams in China and the The Four 1-2 series, was founded in 1998 as a TV production company, thereby having access to a wide-reaching distribution network, a decisive factor in its success since 2006, when it expanded its interests to include cinema production and distribution. Tencent, the internet giant and owner of the application WeChat, whose vast internet platform boasts pre-eminence, founded Gravity Corporation, a financial firm which will invest and work in traditional media, the internet, entertainment, sport and, via its Gravity Pictures, in the production and distribution of films. Sohu TV (tv.sohu.com) with its dedicated entertainment channel, was the site with the most hits – a monthly average of 75 million – in March and April. In 2011, along with China Film Group, Sohu TV launched The Seven Film Project, with the aim of getting seven Chinese actors on board: Liu Ye, Wu Xiubo, Huang Bo, Huang Lei, Li Huangjie, Wang Xuebing and Zhang Mo to make new media films. iQiyi, the online video platform of the search engine Baidu, officially launched the first revenue-sharing model for the distribution of online films, thereby giving movies that did not get a big screen release the chance to earn money in an alternative way.
2013 proved to be a year of promises and hopes for the film industry, starting from production companies, in the constant search to reinvent itself and reinvest in an industry that needs associates in order to expand: China Film Co. Ltd. signed a three-year deal with the Hollywood company Legendary Pictures with the aim of producing a series of Chinese/American co-productions for the international market; new projects are in the pipeline for the brand-new partnership between Irresistible Films, the company co-founded by the powerful Hong Kong producer, Bill Kong – his films include Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) and Lust, Caution (2007) – and Village Roadshow Entertainment Group Asia, which recently enjoyed box office success with Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons by Stephen Chow; Le Vision Pictures, too, announced a partnership with the filmmaker Zhang Yimou, nominated as artistic director for the company, to develop projects financed by the Le Vision Pictures-Zhang Yimou Production Fund.
The colossus Wanda Group, owned by the real estate magnate, Wang Jianlin, remains in the news: after the acquisition of the US cinema chain AMC and the major deal with IMAX, it has announced an US$8.2 billion project in the city of Qingdao to launch the Oriental Movie Metropolis, a new complex of studios for film and TV productions, an exhibition centre, a hotel chain, theatres and cinemas. This news hit the front pages, thanks to a mega press conference in the presence of guests of honour such as Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Beckinsale, Nicole Kidman, Ewan McGregor, John Travolta, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Jet Li, Huang Xiaoming, Tony Leung, Donnie Yen, Zhang Ziyi, Vicky Zhao Wei and representatives of all the Hollywood majors (Lionsgate, Paramount, Sony Pictures, Universal, Warner Bros, The Weinstein Co.).
The production company and distributor Taihe Pictures and the French Wild Bunch have joined forces to create Taihe Wild Bunch, which will concentrate on buying international rights for the distribution of Chinese films while exploring the possibilities of remaking the film The Wild Bunch in China.
China/Hollywood and China/rest-of-the-world productions have been announced with fanfare during national and international events, grabbing the attention of production companies from every corner of the globe. That Chinese cinema aims to become international and escape national confines is a goal that is highly prized, but many believe that co-productions are not the ideal solution. Many are sceptical because the Chinese market, enormous though it is, is limited to the distribution of commercial films whose success is partly based on protectionist policies.
US blockbuster-style success at the box office of Chinese films still reflects a foggy, partial picture, it does not give a real and complete sense of the market because many films are slowed down by restrictions that create a scenario of uniformity rather than diversity. Films co-produced in this system, like Chinese films, risk being unattractive to the foreign market. Promotion and publicity, like visibility and communications for many films, remains an unknown entity, sometimes just an optional.
The public is perceived as a sole entity, a single mass.
The market in China is growing, the mechanisms and dynamics keep changing, but it remains an abstract concept.
Amongst the films of note, barring considerations of box office success, was No Man’s Land by the talented director Ning Hao, who found fame with 2006’s Crazy Stone; it got its big screen release in December of last year, following 3 years of wrestling with the censors. The genre film made a total of US$ 42.39 million in China alone, and was one of the three Chinese films in competition at the 64th Berlin Film festival, opening the doors of the competition of one of the most important European film festivals to a mainstream Chinese feature. Black Coal, Thin Ice by Diao Yinan, winner of the Golden Bear for best film, has just been released in China, too, while the public awaits the release of two other films, Blind Massage by the director Lou Ye, winner of the Silver Bear for exceptional artistic photography, and A Touch of Sin by Jia Zhangke, winner of best screenplay at last year’s Cannes Film festival, but whose release has been delayed on several occasions.
There is already talk of other films winging their way to the big screen, the most anticipated including Jiang Wen’s, Gone with the Bullets, the second in his Bullets Trilogy, following the overwhelming success of Let the Bullets Fly (2010); Hou Hsiao Hsien’s The Lady from Tang which sees the director tackling martial arts for the very first time; John Woo’s The Crossing, with its mega-galactic budget and its star-studded cast, is a dramatic historical action movie, looking at the period between the wars and disasters; Zhang Yimou’s Return, based on the novella The Criminal Lu Yanshi by Yan Gelin; Chen Kaige’s Taoist Mountain, a martial arts film based on the novella by Xu Haofeng, the screenwriter of The Grandmasters by Wong Kar-wai and director of The Sword Identity and The Judge Archer.
While awaiting new developments in Chinese cinema, in this year which has already provided a host of surprises, a final farewell must be given to two directors, Wu Tianming 吳天明 (1939-2014) and Lu Xuechang 路学长 (1964-2014) who left their mark and transformed Chinese cinema, each representative of their generation, and each bequeathing to the world their personal vision of filmmaking. We will honour them by publishing their filmography, because the unpredictable future of Chinese cinema today is inspired by films that have gone down in history.
Maria Ruggieri