Tag Archives: Universal

“Furious 7” Blows the Doors Off China’s Box Office Records

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Furious 7 poster

By Robert Cain for China Film Biz

April 13, 2015

Expectations were high among China’s movie biz pundits for Sunday’s opening of Furious 7, but no one came close to predicting the stunning drive-by looting the Universal release would commit at the country’s movie theaters. Prior Chinese box office records weren’t just beaten, they were throttled, smoked and thoroughly lapped by the skydriving thrillfest.

Furious 7’s opening day haul of 391 million RMB, or $63.1 million, doubled the previous opening day record of 194 million RMB set by Transformers 4 back in June of 2014 (Universal and the Hollywood trades are reporting somewhat higher numbers, but I haven’t yet seen these figures confirmed by official Chinese sources).

Furious 7’s midnight screenings likewise trounced the prior Transformers 4 midnight record of 20 million RMB ($3.3 million) with a new benchmark of 50 million RMB ($8.1 million).

The film’s opening day revenue also nearly equaled the Chinese receipts from the entire 4-week run of the franchise’s previous installment, Fast and Furious 6, which revved up 413 million RMB in 2013, good enough to place 11th in China for the year.

Perhaps most impressively, the film sold more than 10 million admissions in a single day, an attendance total that has been matched only a few times by modern day releases in North America, even though China has 40 percent fewer screens and less than half the seating capacity. What this means is that Furious 7 strained the PRC’s theaters to the limit by selling out a huge percentage of its 93,000 opening day screenings. And it completely squashed the competition, seizing a 92 percent share of the day’s box office revenue.

Top 10 single day grosses

Furious 7 should easily race to a $200 million cume by around April 20th. What happens after that, and whether it can break Transformer 4’s all-time Chinese box office record of nearly 2 billion RMB and $320 million, will depend on its ability to hold up against a slew of competing releases in the next few weeks. These include:

  • The April 17th release of the Fan Bingbing and Han Geng romance Ever Since We Love. Fan is China’s biggest female star, so this film could present a major speed bump for Furious.
  • The April 24th releases of the Dreamworks Animation toon Home and the Arnold Schwarzenegger action crime drama Sabotage. Home’s strong global tally so far bodes well for a strong PRC opening, and Arnold’s last few films have performed much better in China than they have stateside, so Sabotage should easily beat its tepid North American results.
  • The April 30th release of Helios starring Nick Cheung and Shawn Yue. Cheung and Yue’s previous outing The Man From Macau 2 grossed $154 million in February, so if their fans show up for them again they’ll put a major dent in Furious 7‘s record-breaking prospects.

Furious 7‘s surprisingly powerful start raises the bar on expectations for Marvel’s May 12th China release of Avengers: Age of Ultron. One of these movies or the other is likely to be the 2015 China box office champ. Up until last week the consensus for Avengers  was for a $175 million to $200 million cume; now that figure looks relatively unimpressive.

A major question Furious 7‘s box office bonanza brings up is whether the Chinese film authorities at SARFT will deploy their market management tactics to actively crimp the returns of upcoming Hollywood releases, in order to save face for locally made Chinese films. Avengers has what appears to be a big advantage vis a vis Furious in that it faces no major competition for nearly a month after its release. Still, Marvel and Disney should hold off on making any victory laps until SARFT reveals its hand.

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

China’s Monster Summer

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By Robert Cain for China Film Biz

August 22, 2013

The disturbing drought that plagued Hollywood’s movies in China through the first half of 2013 has been quenched, at least temporarily, by a string of box office successes that began in July. Chief among these has been Pacific Rim, a monsters-meet-robots spectacle that couldn’t have been more perfectly aimed at Chinese moviegoers. In its first three weeks of PRC release (as of Thursday August 22nd) the film has devoured $109 million in receipts, good enough for 2nd place this year among all Hollywood imports, and better by far than the $98.7 million the film has earned in North America.

While some might attribute Pacific Rim’s PRC success to its giant CG robots—the Transformers franchise is after all the highest grossing movie series in China’s history—I’d like to make the case that the film’s massive monsters are at least as responsible for scaring up Chinese ticket sales. Chinese audiences love a good monster movie as much as anyone, but the country’s strict censorship policies have restricted the homegrown monster movie quotient to practically zero. It’s a quirk of the Chinese film administration’s policies that monsters can invade China—or its theaters, anyway—from overseas, but they’re generally prohibited from breeding, hatching, or emerging from slimy lagoons onshore in the Middle Kingdom.

Further proof of my theory can be found in this week’s monster opening of Jurassic Park 3D, Universal’s reissue of the 20-year old Steven Spielberg dinosaurs-gone-wild classic. With almost $17 million in Chinese revenue in its first three days, the film ranks as the fourth biggest foreign opener of 2013 and is is well on its way to becoming the biggest grossing re-release of the past 12 months. Although the grosses for reissues tend to quickly fall off, the pattern so far suggests a final gross in the $30 million to $40 million range, which would make it China’s second highest grossing 3D re-release ever—albeit a far distant second—to 2012’s Titanic 3D.Top-grossing HW rel

The next ‘monster’ movie up is of a more kid-friendly variety, Pixar’s Monsters University, which is scheduled to open on Friday, August 23rd. China’s monster mania may help the film to break the Pixar curse, which has seen most of that animation studio’s films open poorly in the PRC and quickly fade away. With little family-fare competition I expect Monsters U to take at least $25 million in China, which would put it well above Toy Story 3’s $16.7 million gross in 2010, Cars 2’s $11.9 million in 2011, and Brave‘s dismal $4.7 million in 2012.

Last week’s box office saw Pacific Rim win its third week in a row, the first time that’s happened for a Hollywood film in 2013 (the China/Hong Kong co-pro Journey to the West won 5 straight weeks in February and March). Tiny Times 2, the sequel to July’s teen girl-oriented hit Tiny Times, ran up its total to $44 million with a $17 million second place finish. And Fan Bingbing’s romantic comedy One Night Surprise from writer-director Jin Yimeng (Sophie’s Revenge) took third with $15 million, proving the rom-com genre’s continuing strength with Chinese audiences.Box office for week ending Aug 18, 2013

Bona’s boxing flick Unbeatable took fourth place with $9 million on generally positive reviews. Rounding out the top 5 was Wanda Media’s disappointing release  The Palace, which managed just $7.4 million in its first 7 days despite the huge opening screen count allocated by its sister company, theatrical exhibitor Wanda Cinema Line. This marks Wanda’s second flop in a row after Man of Tai Chi. Wanda is new at the feature production game, and with its deep pockets the company presumably has the staying power to get enough at bats to eventually generate some homeruns.

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.

Studio Report Card: The Widely Varied Performance of U.S. Distributors in China

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by Robert Cain for China Film Biz

June 18, 2012

Hollywood’s studios are all benefitting from China’s box office boom, but they’re not benefitting equally. Some have been much more effective than others at getting their films into Chinese movie theaters, and their financial results from China distribution have varied widely. The top grossing major studio, Paramount, has over the past couple of years earned more than four times as much from its China releases as the sixth place studio, Universal.

Hollywood needs to pay close attention to how it’s doing in China, and to invest time and energy to figure out how it can do better there. While there are certainly other important territories, none comes close to matching China’s torrid growth and rapidly swelling global importance. The analysis presented below provides what I hope is a valuable snapshot, and a few useful insights, about where American distributors stand in China today.

To conduct this analysis I reviewed the box office results of the more than 60 American films that were released in China during the nearly 18 month period from January 1st, 2011 through June 10th, 2012. These included both revenue-sharing ‘quota’ films and ‘flat fee’ imports. I classified each film as belonging to a single U.S. distributor—a task that was not as easy as it sounds, because quite a few films are released by one company in the U.S. and by an entirely different company in China. My test was to assess, as best as I could, which company was receiving the distribution receipts from China, and to assign that company as the American distributor of record for the purposes of this study.

During the 18-month study period, Sony, Paramount, Warner Bros and Disney each exported 7 or more films to China, while Fox placed just 4 films there and Universal only 3. The ability to obtain quota slots has been a key factor separating the most financially successful studios in China from the least successful ones.

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Also important, of course, is the relative box office drawing power of each American studio’s films with Chinese audiences. On that score Paramount was also the leader with an average of $59 million per release, while Sony brought up the rear among major studios with barely a third of that figure, at $23 million per release.

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Another useful measure to examine is China indexing, that is, the share of total worldwide box office earned by each company’s films in China. This figure tells us how ‘China friendly’ each company’s slate has been; the higher the number, the greater the China appeal. By this measure Twentieth Century Fox, with its out-sized China release of Titanic, led the way. Had it not been for Titanic, Paramount would have led on this score too.

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When the studios started making the films that are the subject of this study, it’s unlikely that any of them were thinking much about China. But the world has changed in the past two years. Given China’s rapid emergence, all of the studios will need to fully incorporate China into their strategies for developing, producing and distributing their global films. While the film genres, their stories, and their overall suitability for China are all important, of equal or even greater importance are the studios’ continued access to distribution, and the effectiveness of the marketing and releasing of their films. Toward this end, co-producing movies with Chinese partners will become an increasingly important tactic for American companies to enhance their standing and to exercise greater control over their results in the PRC.

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.