Tag Archives: The Viral Factor

China’s Box Office: Hollywood Films Regain Dominance

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[Note: If you’re looking for the article “China’s Film Investors Flex Their Financial Muscles in Hollywood” you may have been directed to the wrong link. Please click here for that article]

By Albert Wang for China Film Biz

February 8, 2012

For the second week in a row, Mission: Impossible 4 Ghost Protocol reigned at the Chinese box office, grossing a reported $39.4 million and bringing the film’s cumulative 9 day gross in mainland China to just under $56 million.

Out of the $24.3 million that MI:4 grossed over the weekend in the foreign theatrical circuit, $19.8 million came from China. To put the numbers in context, MI:4 grossed a mere $7.4 million in its opening weekend in Japan in December of 2011. Until recently, Japan was the world’s 2nd largest movie market. It took MI:4 film little over a week in China to gross as much as it did in a full month in Japan.

In second place was Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, which continues its decent showing in China with a gross of $3.56 million over the week, bringing the film’s 22 day total to $27.7 million.  Meanwhile, both The Viral Factor and All’s Well, Ends Well 2012 held on to the number three and four spots, grossing $2.9 million and $2.4 million, respectively.

The lone newcomer into the top five was Jonnie To’s Life Without Principle, which earned a rather mild $2.3 million over three days to claim the number five spot.

With the exception of To’s Life Without Principle, there was relatively little movement in the box office top 10.  And so this week it is worth noting the complete dominance Hollywood films have had in the Chinese market, with M:I 4 and Sherlock Holmes together accounting for a cool 75% of the mainland Chinese box office this week.

This dominance by a pair of Hollywood films comes at a time when it seems that just about anyone and everyone with deep pockets in China is looking to develop a film fund.  This week saw the announcement of Bruno Wu’s $800 million Harvest Seven Stars Media Private Equity Fund, as well as the announcement of a Chinese government-backed film fund to be overseen by China Mainstream Media National Film Capital Hollywood Inc. (HSSMPEF and CMMNFCHI, respectively; good luck remembering those acronyms), the U.S. division of China National Film Capital Co. Ltd.  Even retired NBA star Yao Ming has been reported to be looking into developing a film fund in recent weeks.

The purported goal of most if not all of these film funds is to produce Chinese films with a more global appeal.  And yet as we see from the Chinese box office this week, Chinese films have yet to find a way to effectively compete with Hollywood films on their own turf.   This is due to a wide range of issues, from overly restrictive government regulations, to a lack of quality source material being developed in China for the big screen, to Chinese audience’s demonstrated preference for Hollywood’s film offerings.  However, I’d like to posit another problem a globally appealing Chinese cinema faces.

China, in spite of all the capital being thrown at film funds of late, lacks the necessary star power to promote its films globally.   M:I 4 had Tom Cruise, Holmes had Robert Downey, Jr.  Without those stars headlining their respective films, it’s difficult to imagine either film performing as well as it has on the foreign theatrical circuit.

And so in spite of all the promises the various film funds have made regarding a future global Chinese cinema in the making, a big question remains:  Who will be the Chinese Tom Cruise?  The Chinese Robert Downey, Jr.?  Or the Chinese Shia Lebouf?

Albert Wang is an aspiring producer of US-China film co-productions who joined the Pacific Bridge Pictures team in December, 2011. His previous blog on US-China films can be seen at hollymu.com.

China’s Box Office: A Holmes-y Reception

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by Albert Wang with Robert Cain for China Film Biz

January 31, 2012

Note: Due to an unexpected week’s delay in China’s box office reporting, we’re just now putting out the report for the week ending January 22nd, with the report for the week ending January 29th to come shortly.

We can only speculate as to why China’s box office numbers were delayed last week. The hold-up may have been related to SARFT’s recent crackdown on box office misreporting and under-reporting. Apparently new systems are currently being implemented to prevent the widespread practice of selling tickets for one film and then writing the name of another film on the face of the ticket. This sort of manipulation allows monies paid by the ticket buyer for one film to be funneled to another.

When the numbers were finally released they showed Warner Bros’ Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows to be last week’s big winner at the mainland Chinese box office with a decent $10 million gross. This may come as a bit of a surprise, given that the original Sherlock Holmes movie was viewed by some as a relative flop in mainland China when it was released in 2010. NYMag, for instance, pointed out that while Avatar earned in China about one-third of what it made in the US, the original Sherlock movie’s China release earned just one-eighteenth of its US box office haul.

Perhaps the first film’s underperformance can be attributed to China’s unfamiliarity with the Sherlock Holmes brand, but Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows has had no such marketing woes. The sequel is on pace to significantly outdo the original at the Chinese box office.

In second place with $7.3 million was Dante Lam’s newly released thriller The Viral Factor, reportedly Taiwan megastar Jay Chou’s last starring role in an action movie. The film also stars Nicholas Tse in yet another gritty and nuanced “bad guy” role. Stylish Hong Kong director Lam, whose most acclaimed film is 2008’s Beast Stalker (also starring Nicholas Tse), is known for making his films chock full of car chases and explosions — not to mention the occasional male actor literally crying his heart out.

The rest of the Chinese box office leaders include the previous week’s top film, The Great Magician (starring Tony Leung and Zhou Xun), the animated film Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf 4, and the 2012 installment of the All’s Well Ends Well series, the Chinese New Year comedy that stars many of Hong Kong’s biggest stars. With an opening weekend tally of just $2.2 million, an 80 percent drop from the 2011 edition’s first week result, the numbers for All’s Well Ends Well 2012 don’t bode well for continuation of the series.

The Taiwanese romance You Are the Apple of My Eye, while dropping five places to the eighth spot at last week’s box office, continues its strong showing, having already grossed more than all 2011 Taiwanese releases in mainland China combined.

Meanwhile Zhang Yimou’s war epic The Flowers of War has wound down its theatrical run on the mainland with a cumulative gross just below the $100M mark. Assuming the reported numbers are accurate, even though Flowers stands as the 3rd highest grossing film ever in the PRC, the film’s initial theatrical returns will fail to repay even half of its $90 million production cost.

Cumulative box office for the week was $40.8 million, up by 13 percent as measured in dollars (up 7 percent in Chinese yuan) over the same period last year. This would be a nice bump in most territories, but given that the mainland’s screen count has risen by 50 percent since January, 2011, theater operators will undoubtedly be disappointed with the weekly result.

Albert Wang is an aspiring producer of US-China film co-productions who joined the Pacific Bridge Pictures team in December, 2011. His previous blog on US-China films can be seen at hollymu.com.

Robert Cain is a producer and entertainment industry consultant who has been doing business in China since 1987. He can be reached at rob@pacificbridgepics.com and at www.pacificbridgepics.com.