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For the past week China’s box office has been dominated by foreign films, with the top 5 ranks held by imports. This is a rare, but not entirely unprecedented situation.
But there is something new that has occurred this week: two of the top four ranks have been claimed by non-Hollywood, non-English language pictures. And those two films—the $13 million Bollywood comedy PK, and the $35 million Japanese children’s animated feature Stand By Me Doraemon—have been holding their own against Tomorrowland and San Andreas, two Hollywood action pictures with combined budgets of $300 million.
PK, which features Indian star Aamir Khan as an alien who comes to Earth on a research mission, has been running neck-and-neck with the George Clooney sci-fi vehicle Tomorrowland, which, at a budget of $190 million, cost nearly 15 times as much as PK to produce. And Stand by Me Doraemon has been holding its own against Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s San Andreas, which cost 3 times as much to make.
Should Hollywood be worried?
For the past half-decade China’s movie market has been a veritable gold rush for foreign film distributors, with many vying for the limited number of import slots allowed under the PRC’s strict quota system. With the Middle Kingdom rapidly growing into what will soon be the world’s biggest box office territory, each opportunity to access the Chinese market is a potential bonanza for distributors, with individual pictures routinely grossing $50 million, $100 million, and more in mainland theaters.
The vast majority of those valuable import slots have routinely gone to Hollywood films, mainly because they throw off lots of cash for China’s theaters, film distributors, and government tax collectors who take 8.3 percent off the top of each ticket sale. For several years the market share of Hollywood imports has been roughly half of China’s annual box office revenues.
China’s film authorities are ambivalent about this situation. On the one hand they enjoy the economic benefits that American films offer. If it weren’t for the steady and reliable cash flow from Hollywood movies, China’s theater business wouldn’t have flourished, and they wouldn’t have the booming modern film industry that they have today. On the other hand, the country’s leaders are wary of the outsized influence that American values have on their citizenry.
If movies from India, Russia, and other places outside the U.S. can consistently hold their own against American ones, China just might just welcome the chance to re-assign some of those prized import slots to films from those countries. And that would be very worrying for Hollywood indeed.
Connect with me on Twitter @robcain or Sina Weibo @robcain, or connect with me on LinkedIn.
But there is something new that has occurred this week: two of the top four ranks have been claimed by non-Hollywood, non-English language pictures. And those two films—the $13 million Bollywood comedy PK, and the $35 million Japanese children’s animated feature Stand By Me Doraemon—have been holding their own against Tomorrowland and San Andreas, two Hollywood action pictures with combined budgets of $300 million.
PK, which features Indian star Aamir Khan as an alien who comes to Earth on a research mission, has been running neck-and-neck with the George Clooney sci-fi vehicle Tomorrowland, which, at a budget of $190 million, cost nearly 15 times as much as PK to produce. And Stand by Me Doraemon has been holding its own against Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s San Andreas, which cost 3 times as much to make.
Should Hollywood be worried?
For the past half-decade China’s movie market has been a veritable gold rush for foreign film distributors, with many vying for the limited number of import slots allowed under the PRC’s strict quota system. With the Middle Kingdom rapidly growing into what will soon be the world’s biggest box office territory, each opportunity to access the Chinese market is a potential bonanza for distributors, with individual pictures routinely grossing $50 million, $100 million, and more in mainland theaters.
The vast majority of those valuable import slots have routinely gone to Hollywood films, mainly because they throw off lots of cash for China’s theaters, film distributors, and government tax collectors who take 8.3 percent off the top of each ticket sale. For several years the market share of Hollywood imports has been roughly half of China’s annual box office revenues.
China’s film authorities are ambivalent about this situation. On the one hand they enjoy the economic benefits that American films offer. If it weren’t for the steady and reliable cash flow from Hollywood movies, China’s theater business wouldn’t have flourished, and they wouldn’t have the booming modern film industry that they have today. On the other hand, the country’s leaders are wary of the outsized influence that American values have on their citizenry.
If movies from India, Russia, and other places outside the U.S. can consistently hold their own against American ones, China just might just welcome the chance to re-assign some of those prized import slots to films from those countries. And that would be very worrying for Hollywood indeed.
Connect with me on Twitter @robcain or Sina Weibo @robcain, or connect with me on LinkedIn.
