Despite a nearly 50 percent rise in Chinese box-office returns this year, local moviemakers aren't smiling. Xu Fan reports.

The Chinese box office surged nearly 50 percent in the first half of the year, but with more than half the earnings coming from foreign movies, domestic producers aren't a happy bunch.

Since overtaking Japan as the world's second-largest movie consumer in 2012, China has grossed a record 20.3 billion yuan ($3.3 billion) from 156 movies released between January and June, a rise of 49 percent as compared to 2014, according to the country's media regulator.

The Chinese market, which has maintained an average growth rate of more than 30 percent in the past five years, took 96 days to cross the 10 billion yuan mark and 175 days to surpass 20 billion yuan, the fastest ever in the history of Chinese cinema during the past six month.

In February, homegrown productions nudged out Hollywood for the first time to top world box-office records for a single month, bringing in 4.13 billion yuan. During the Spring Festival holiday from Feb 19-25, a record 1.8 billion yuan was grossed by Chinese theaters, mostly by local movies.

The 10 top-grossing titles in that month included seven Chinese movies (led by The Man from Macao II at 974 million yuan), a Sino-French production (Wolf Totem) and two Hollywood flicks (The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies and The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 1).

Chinese moviemakers' good run at the box office, however, ended soon with March being a historically low-income month and the three months thereafter being recaptured by Hollywood.

The high-octane Fast and Furious 7 made the most money ever in Chinese box-office history, with 2.4 billion yuan, and that helped the country's theaters earn a total profit of 4.11 billion yuan in April, leading to a 126 percent rise from the same period last year.

In the past six months, 53.3 percent of the box office was taken by foreign movies, dominated by Fast and Furious 7, Avengers: Age of Ultron (1.46 billion yuan) and Jurassic World (1.26 billion yuan).

The blockbusters that crossed the milestone of 500 million yuan included four homegrown productions and seven imported titles, according to Entgroup, a Chinese entertainment research company. Industry insiders say, rising enthusiasm for cinema among Chinese moviegoers and a boom in the number of screens and disposable income among Chinese have pushed box-office profits higher.

"The most crucial reason is that more viewers prefer to go to cinemas to watch giant screen titles for better visual and auditory effects," says Ou Wanyong, an analyst at Entgroup.

"The diversity of movie genres and better knowledge of technology are luring more people to buy tickets."

Last year, as many as 830 million tickets were sold. The past six months witnessed about 560 million admissions in theaters, triggering a 45.9 percent rise from the same period in 2014. Entgroup predicts at least 1.1 billion admissions by the end of this year.

To date, there are nearly 28,000 screens at more than 5,600 cinemas across the mainland. The figures are expected to increase mainly in third-and fourth-tier cities, with the mainland likely to have more than 2,000 new screens by December.

Once major entertainment hubs - Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou - are today no longer the only box-office trendsetters. Chinese in their 20s who are from smaller cities, are also adding to ticket sales as their incomes rise, some industry insiders said at the recent Shanghai International Film Festival.

Entgroup, which collected data from March to May, says that Chinese between ages 15 and 24, accounted for 32.2 percent of the moviegoing population for that period, and those between 25 and 34 comprised another 32.9 percent. More than half of the moviegoers earned a monthly income of 3,000-6,000 yuan, according to Entgroup.

Based on the first six months' performance and past years' growth rates, Entgroup estimates that 2015 will see a record-breaking income of 40 billion yuan at the Chinese box office.

Last year, the figure was 29.6 billion yuan, up 36 percent from 2013.

The figures act more like a double-edged sword - inspiring but also challenging.

Zhang Zhao, CEO of Le Vision Pictures, reveals that his company devised a strategy to tailor movies for target audiences on the mainland.

His Beijing-based company invested in the upcoming youth romance Tiny Times 4 - the fourth installment of a 1.3 billion yuan franchise - because of the popularity of Guo Jingming, the director and best-selling author of the namesake novel on which the movies are based.

Pointing to Hollywood's advantages in technology and big budgets, Zhang says that they are able to win global markets with high-profile cast members and spectacular screen settings. Still, that's not easy, Zhang adds. Chinese moviemakers should first get to know what local audiences want to watch and accordingly customize productions for target groups.

Contact the writer at xufan@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily USA 07/09/2015 page08)