Cinema's summer love story

Cinema's summer love story
With the arrival of the summer vacation, a number of domestic films are gearing up to appeal to youngsters. The parenting-themed film Looking Up is one of the most anticipated.[Photo provided to China Daily] (China Daily/ANN)
With the arrival of the summer vacation, a number of domestic films are gearing up to appeal to youngsters. The parenting-themed film Looking Up is one of the most anticipated.[Photo provided to China Daily] (China Daily/ANN)
Published 18 July 2019
China Daily

CHINA - (China Daily/ANN)

The sunny weather is heating up China's cool first-half box-office returns as out-of-school students flock to theaters, Xu Fan reports.

For three consecutive weeks since the start of summer vacation, China's weekly box-office revenue has surpassed 1 billion yuan ($145.3 million), boosting the morale of struggling domestic filmmakers after a first-half slowdown.

With some Chinese schools closing for the summer break in late June, the first shots in the "battle" to get youngsters into theater seats were fired early.

Despite the withdrawal of several highly anticipated films, such as The Eight Hundred and Better Days, a number of others are gearing up to reap the rewards of the two-month-long holiday.

Rao Shuguang, president of the China Film Critics Association, says the summer vacation is one of the most lucrative box-office seasons in China.

"The box-office figures in the past three weeks are uplifting. Domestic cinemas will see a rise in the number of theatergoers due to a series of beneficial factors like the hot weather and students looking to fill their vacation days," says Rao.

Statistics from the box-office tracker Beacon show that three weeks from June 24 to July 14 earned 1.1 billion yuan, 1.17 billion yuan and 1.27 billion yuan, respectively.

Each week's figure is more than the total 1.03 billion yuan grossed over the entire summer of 2008, when the country's film industry just began to take off.

Following Marvel's superhero blockbuster Spider-Man: Far from Home, which topped the Chinese mainland's box office charts for two weeks in a row between late June and early July, Hong Kong crime thriller The White Storm 2: Drug Lords took up the baton to dominate the 27th week of 2019 thanks to its stellar cast and the duo of Andy Lau and Louis Koo, two regional icons of the silver screen.

With its touch of nostalgia, the live action remake of the 1994 Oscar-winning animated Disney feature, The Lion King, is currently this week's top earner.

Most analysts believe that the Chinese film market is quite likely to emerge from the shadow cast by the market slowdown in the first half of this year.

Many industry insiders describe the first half of the year as "a severe winter" through which they needed to huddle together for warmth to survive, as it has been hard to raise the capital to shoot films and secure screen time in theaters.

Official statistics show the country's box-office receipts from January to June totaled 31.2 billion yuan, down 2.7 percent compared to the same period last year.

There was also a decline in the number of theatergoers. Cinemas on the mainland registered 808 million admissions, a drop of 10.3 percent year-on-year.

Domestic films have encountered bigger challenges than their foreign rivals. From January to June, movies produced by local studios earned 15.8 billion yuan, a fall of nearly 17 percent compared to 2018.

However, China has still kept up the construction spree, with new cinemas continuing to open their doors, bolstering its position as the country with the highest number of screens, since it overtook the United States in 2016.

As of June 30, China has 64,944 cinema screens, with around 90 percent of them-or 58,179-being 3D format. There are 5,423 cinemas in county-level cities, providing access to 23,589 screens. These figures account for 46 and 36 percent of their national totals, respectively, signaling that small cities are still considered to be the markets with the biggest potential.

However, it is online reviews from other cinemagoers that mostly decide a new film's market performance, says Fu Haifang, general manager of Zhejiang Star Lights Cinema Chain.

Unlike in the past, when filmmakers unwillingly gave sneak previews that could cause spoilers, a lot of the forthcoming Chinese films will have test screenings one or two weeks earlier than their official releases across the mainland.

 

The move is a way to drive reviews and comments online, as audiences nowadays are more likely to trust internet users' reviews than articles written by professional critics, says Beijing-based industry analyst, Jiang Yong.

The summer vacation and the National Day holiday are believed to be two lucrative seasons that provide a major boost to box-office figures in the latter half of the year, adds Jiang.

Among the most anticipated Chinese films are Deng Chao's new directorial feature Looking Up, the animated feature Ne Zha, and the film The Bravest, adapted from a true story about a group of heroic firefighters.

"Ne Zha is a famous figure in Chinese mythology. Considering the current reviews accumulated online from test screenings, Ne Zha will perhaps break the box-office record held by Monkey King: Hero is Back," says Jiang.

Released in 2015, Monkey King: Hero is Back is still the highest-grossing Chinese animated film of all time.

Because the highest-grossing film in the first half of 2019 was the gamechanging sci-fi epic, The Wandering Earth, some insiders believe the market will also see a revival of domestic sci-fi films-a genre that Chinese filmmakers have traditionally struggled with-exemplified by such forthcoming titles as Shanghai Fortress and Pathfinder.

For some filmmakers, however, the market figures do not influence their passion for the art of creation and love of cinema.

"I don't pay too much attention to the figures, but I've heard from some insider friends that the situation is not currently optimistic. However, the numbers don't completely reflect the big picture of Chinese cinema," says director Dong Yue, who is best known for his award-winning film The Looming Storm. "I believe we should focus more on providing Chinese audiences with high quality work," he adds.