The year 2020 was disastrous for the global film industry. In China, cinemas were closed for 178 days and some premature attempts to reopen were promptly nipped in the bud due to justified fears of a possible second wave of contagion. The public finally returned to theatres on 20 July. The undisputed success of the summer was the epic The Eight Hundred by director Guan Hu, released on the big screen in August. It became the 2020 box-office champion in China and the world. Chinese cinema in 2020 broke yet another coveted record, with China overtaking North America as the world’s biggest box-office grosser. There are many signs that new regulations and restrictions will be inspired by the oft-expressed idea that art should first and foremost play an important role in shaping the Communist ideology of Chinese citizens. In 2021, preparations are being made for the July celebrations to mark the centenary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party.
The Market
According to data from Variety Asia, a magazine specialising in film market analysis in China, the 2020 box office totalled CNY 20.4 billion (US$3.13 billion), surpassing North America and becoming the world’s largest film market with 548 million tickets sold, a 69% drop from the record-breaking box office of CNY 64.17 billion (approximately US$9.08 billion) in 2019, and the CNY 60.7 billion (then US$9.34 billion) box-office takings recorded in 2018. However, the result remains extraordinary considering that cinemas in China were non-operational for 178 days, from 23 January to 20 July, and upon reopening were allowed to see tickets for only 30% of their capacity; and only gradually, to operate at 50% from 14 August and 75% from 25 September. Jimmy Wu, CEO of the Lumiere Pavilions cinema chain, which boasts a diverse programming schedule of genre and art-house films of all nationalities, confirmed in an October interview with Screen Daily that even with reduced capacity, the market has managed to achieve good results due to the availability of films and the ability to renegotiate rental terms.
More than a thousand small cinemas were forced to close due to bankruptcy, mainly because of exorbitant rents. Variety Asia also reports Comscore’s analysis of the market recovery following the pandemic months, attributing the positive results to two main factors: adherence to health protocols and the availability of local films, a key balance in attracting audiences back to the theatres. The most popular were dramas, historical epics and war films, as well as romantic comedies with happy endings. Thus, a month after reopening, at just 5 0% seating capacity, the epic war film about eight hundred Chinese soldiers ready to fight against the Japanese army in Shanghai in 1937, The Eight Hundred by director Guan Hu, produced by Hua Yi Brothers, The Seventh Arts Pictures, Tencent Pictures, Beijing Enlight Media and Alibaba Pictures, topped the year’s world ranking with takings of more than US$460 million. The Eight Hundred and The Sacrifice, a propaganda film set during the Korean War and co-directed by the same director Guan Hu, accounted for a fifth of the year’s total box office takings, more than for all imported films (of non-Chinese nationality).
In 2020, imported films accounted for only 16.3% of ticket sales, a remarkable decline when compared to 38% of the 2018’s gross and 35.9% in 2019, obviously due to the chaos generated by the pandemic in the North American release schedule. With the rescheduling of so many highly anticipated Hollywood releases, the stage has been cleared for many Chinese films to scale the heights of the domestic and international box office. While the crisis triggered by the pandemic had led to fears of the total closure of a massive number of cinemas, authorities report that the number of screens in the territory has increased by almost 6,000 compared to 2019, bringing the total number of screens from 69,787 in 2019 to 75,581 in 2020.
Estimates made last year imagined that the construction of new cinemas would decrease, as the territory is almost saturated. The end of the boom era of investment in the sector would have meant that box-office results would have been primarily influenced by the quality of films and no longer by the driving effect of new theatres being built which is behind the growth in the number of tickets sold that have been the root cause of the extraordinary box office results in recent years. Instead, the National Film Administration reports that in the first two months of 2021, the number of screens reached 77,769, two thousand more.
On the other hand, there has been some dissatisfaction with the hike in ticket prices, which has caused the consumers’ rights association to rail against theatre operators during the period of the Lunar New Year, when audiences are known to flock to the cinema. Ticket prices had already risen by 5.8% with an average of CNY37 (about US$5.2) per ticket in 2019, without the average ticket price hike at the time distorting the box office result. During the 2021 Lunar New Year festivities, the average ticket price of CNY49.1 (US$7.6) rose threefold to CNY100 (US$15.46).
The Films
The films that ensured the recovery of the market are the ones that registered staggering box-office takings during the golden weeks of the October festivities, Christmas-New Year, Lunar New Year, the first week of the May festivities, and the same is expected to happen for the celebration of the Centenary of the Founding of the Communist Party. To date, the success of so many films is attributed to a surge of patriotic-nationalist spirit that matured during the pandemic. Released in the October festivities to mark the anniversary of the Founding of the People’s Republic of China, when cinemas were able to sell up to 75% of their tickets, the box-office successes grossed US$ 580 million: the nine-director omnibus My People, My Homeland, produced by Beijing Culture, with Zhang Yimou as executive producer, generated US$ 422.38 million, following the success of My People, My Country which totalled US$ 467 million in the same period the previous year; Peter Chan’s Leap (also known as The Chinese Women’s Volleyball Team) starring Gong Li as Lang Ping, the legendary coach of the national women’s volleyball team that won the gold medal at the 2016 Rio Olympics, nominated by the People’s Republic of China to represent the nation at the Oscars as Best Foreign Language Film, grossed US$ 113 million; the war epic The Sacrifice by directors Guan Hu, Frant Gwo and Lu Yang, produced to celebrate the 70th anniversary of China’s entry into the Korean War (1950-1953) on 25 October, totalled US$167.1 million.
Standing out from the patriotism, Enlight Pictures’ Jiang Ziya: Legend of Deification with takings of US$ 236.1 million, the second episode of the animated series inaugurated in 2019 by Nezha, which grossed US$ 750 million, claiming second place after Wolf Warrior 2 as the most successful film of all time in China. Li Xiaofeng’s Back to the Wharf, in cinemas in November at the same time as the behemoths The Sacrifice and My People, My Homeland, fared quite well at the box office, grossing US$ 7 million. Popular with younger audiences, it features an excellent cast of actors including Zhang Yu (An Elephant Sitting Still), Song Jia (The Shadow Play) and Wang Yanhui (Dying to Survive). There was also a comedy about three young people running away from their problems to revolutionise the world with their e-commerce project in Coffee or Tea? by director Derek Hui (This Is Not What I Expected with Kaneshiro Takeshi and Zhou Dongyu) which took US$40.6m.
The romantic drama, A Little Red Flower by Han Yan, proved to be a talking point: the film grossed US$80.1m in the first three days after its release on 31 December 2020. The cast includes Jackson Yee, member of the band TFboys and star of the critically acclaimed Better Days (Hong Kong’s Oscar nominee for Best Foreign Language Film) and Liu Haocun, director Zhang Yimou’s new muse in three of his latest films, One Second, Cliff Walkers and The Coldest Gun.
Han Yan, director of the much-loved Go Away Mr. Tumor, in A Little Red Flower shows the suffering of families facing the same drama, as “a spiritual guide and therapeutic support for the audience.” A Little Red Flower, the second part of his “Life Trilogy,” triggered some public scrutiny over the similarity of the film’s theme to The Fault in Our Stars directed by Josh Boone and produced by Fox 2000 Pictures in 2014. The Hollywood Reporter explained that it was Fox’s intention to put together a Chinese remake in 2016 with Han Yan as producer. The film was never produced in China, and the controversy remains, but in the meantime A Little Red Flower totalled US$ 216 million at the box office, crowning the 2021 chart until the release of director Chen Sicheng’s crime comedy Detective Chinatown 3.
2021 kicked off with a formidable weekend of takings totalling US$199 million at the box office, according to Variety Asia. And two films, the comedy Bath Buddies by director Yi Xiaoxing (Flavors of Youth) and the fantasy-thriller The Yin-Yang Master: Dream of Eternity by director Guo Jingming (Tiny Times) will also be remembered because of accusations of plagiarism which resulted in them being pulled from cinemas the day before the international launch of The Yin-Yang Master: Dream of Eternity on Netflix in 190 countries.
An adaptation of Yumemakura Baku’s fictional Japanese novel Onmyoji, about the four best Ying-Yang masters who are called upon to slay the most powerful of demons, which was released at Christmas and grossed US$68 million, the film has been accused of copying scenes from Marvel’s Doctor Strange. Meanwhile the producers of Bath Buddies found themselves in hot water when they were accused by production company MoonWatcher of carrying out an unauthorised remake of their Korean web-comedy, already planned with Yi Xiaoying and Wanda Media years earlier. As the copyright battle rages on, the film has grossed US$52.6 million. An action film about a team of Chinese coastguards, The Rescue by Dante Lam, the same director of Operation Mekong (2016, US$180 million) and Operation Red Sea (2018, US$558 million) is another of his patriotic blockbusters.
Online ticketing services on the Maoyan, Tao Piaopiao and Douban platforms unanimously confirmed Pixar’s Soul as the most loved film by audiences, who were sensitive to its existential musings. The comedy Warm Hug, directed by and starring Chang Yuan (Hello Mr. Billionaire, Goodbye Mr. Loser) grossed US$ 121.5 million. Detective Chinatown 3, starring the tried-and-tested duo of Wang Baoqiang and Liu Haoran, released on 12 February, during Lunar New Year, grossed US$398 million. The action-comedy Endgame, a remake of the Japanese Key of Life, directed by Rao Xiaozhi (A Cool Fish), produced by and starring Andy Lau, made US$118m. The thriller A Writer’s Odyssey (also known as Assassin in Red), an adaptation of a popular novel written by Shuang Xuetao and directed by Lu Yang (Brotherhood of Blades), grossed US$159m and secured Huace Pictures’ guarantee to back new chapters to be released in 2022.
But the most unexpected success of early 2021 was the comedy Hi Mum, a debut feature written and directed by Jia Ling and starring Jia Ling herself, Shen Teng, Chen He and Zhang Xiaofei. Released on the same day as Detective Chinatown 3, it grossed US$ 824.9 million making it the biggest hit of 2021, and the second most successful non-English language film of all time, as well as the most successful film by a female director. Rave reviews and word of mouth contributed to its popularity. Hi Mum, originally titled Hello, Li Huangying is a very personal film that the director made as a tribute to her mother. Love of family and traditional filial piety seem to be the two major themes that moved the audience in 2021. Released in cinemas during the Lunar New Year, when many families could not come together to celebrate it, it struck an additional emotional chord.
The May Bank Holiday films gave the market a further boost after a very successful Lunar New Year, altogether grossing US$1.2 billion in six days, thanks in part to an increased audience due to the tradition of travelling out of town during the Bank Holiday. These included Hero, about the lives of Chinese women during the pandemic, three short films by Joan Chen, Li Shaohong, and Sylvia Chang; director Leste Chen’s (Battle of Memories) thriller Home Sweet Home starring Hong Kong superstar Aaron Kwok; and the urban comedy Tiger Robbers from director Li Yu (Buddha Mountain), who for the first time in 14 years is releasing a film not starring Fan Bingbing, who fell from grace after being involved in a tax scandal in 2018.
A remake of Korean romantic drama On Your Wedding Days, director Han Tian’s My Love failed to convince, and negative reviews and low social network ratings stunted its climb up the charts. The five-day May Bank Holiday period ended below par with receipts of US$258 million. The drop is understandably attributed to the lack of Hollywood films and the abundance of films released in cinemas at the same time and during the major holidays, leading to films competing against each other at the box office. The July 2021 films will all be for the Centenary Celebrations, so prominent filmmakers and companies have been working on at least one propaganda film for July theatrical release. These include The Revolutionary by Xu Zhanxiong (director of Wild Grass), about the historical period 1912-1927 as told by one of the Party’s founders, the revolutionary Li Dazhao, starring Zhang Songwen (Lou Ye’s The Shadow Play), and 1921 directed by Huang Jianxin (The Founding of an Army).
The Filmmakers
The filmmakers who have inspired us the most in these long months are those who never cease to astound us with their films, like the indefatigable Master of Cinema, Zhang Yimou. After Shadows, presented at the Venice Film Festival in 2018, One Second was his most anticipated film ever. Since February 2019, when it was unexpectedly withdrawn from the Berlinale Competition for “technical” (read censorship) issues, One Second has been subject to constant reassessments by the authorities, putting its distribution at risk. It was finally released a year and a half later, on 27 November 2020, with a running time of one minute less than the version that would have been screened at the Berlinale, with rumours that the censored parts may have been replaced by entirely new scenes. Set during the Cultural Revolution, One Second is his love letter to the art of cinema. The film’s new poster is a handwritten note from the director himself: “I will never be able to forget how I felt when I saw a film as a young boy. That indescribable excitement and joy was like a dream. Films accompany us as we grow older. Dreams follow us throughout our lives. There will always be a film that you will remember all your life. Perhaps what you will remember is not the film itself, but the longing and anticipation you feel when you look at the stars.”
His espionage thriller Cliff Walkers (also known as Impasse), which had a long production run due to the pandemic, was released during the May Bank Holiday season and garnered excellent reviews and word of mouth. The film about four Communist agents trained in the Soviet Union to carry out a secret mission in the city of Harbin scored a very high 9.1 on the electronic ticketing platform Maoyan. His Under the Light (aka Rock Solid) will be the first modern-day film since 2005’s Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles, about a family reluctantly involved in murky business dealings. While waiting for the film to be released, the director is already working on The Coldest Gun, the new project undertaken with his daughter Zhang Mo, about a Chinese sniper renowned for his ability to eliminate American soldiers during the Korean War.
Fast Forward to 2022
Coming to the big screen – probably in time for the 2022 Lunar New Year – will be The Four Seas, the new film by Han Han, writer turned film director of hits such as Pegasus and Duckweed; the comedy Superpower Family by Song Yang (Goodbye Mr Loser), produced by the theatre troupe Kaixin Mahua; Breaking Through by Wang Fangfang, a sport film about speed skating at the Olympics, in view of the Winter Olympics to be held in Beijing in 2022; the 3D animation film for children The Fantastic Notebook by director Xue Xiaolu (Finding Mr. Right). Huace Pictures has already announced its new projects, which will include a new outing by Bi Gan (Kaili Blues, Long Day’s Journey Into Night) as well as recent chapters of A Writer’s Odyssey, adapted from a popular novel by Shuang Xuetao and directed by Lu Yang. Also, The Translator, produced by Guo Fan (The Wandering Earth) and directed by Rao Xiaozhi (A Cool Fish).
And there’s more: a feature-length adaptation of a popular Hong Kong TVB series from 2021 A Step into the Past, which will reunite the original cast, Louis Koo and Raymond Lam. The Wandering Earth: Beyond 2020 Special Edition took US$425,000 (RMB2.8m) at the end of November of last year, and the producers have announced that the second chapter is already a work-in-progress with a planned release date in the 2023 Lunar New Year.
Data provided by Artisan Gateway, Screen Daily, The Hollywood Reporter, Variety Asia.
Maria A. Ruggieri