Feng’s latest film ‘Youth’ tops box office
Zhang Weibo, head of Youth’s promotion team and founder of the Beijing-based marketing company Bravo Entertainment, figured the movie’s performance so far may earn it longer screening time and bring in more revenues.
BEIJING: Award-winning director Feng Xiaogang is rapidly establishing himself as a huge money spinner.
Everything he touches appear to turn to cash — sackfuls of them.
His latest film Youth, a bittersweet tale that chronicles the lives of several members of a Chinese military art troupe from the 1970s to the 1990s, has raked in 480 million yuan (RM299 million) since Dec 15 to top the box office.
Most analysts expect it to become Feng’s highest-grossing film to cap his three decades in showbiz.
The film, based on an art troupe affiliated to the People’s Liberation Army in southwestern China, zooms in on two performers: a role model who is treated unfairly, and a long discriminated dancer who unexpectedly becomes a war heroine.
Simultaneously released in China and North America, it has received 7.9 points out of 10 on Douban, a major review website, and 7.2 on Amazon’s IMDb.
Despite some criticism, nostalgia is bringing in viewers, and the film has attracted a large number of people in their 50s or older.
Typically, China’s main moviegoers are in their 20s, and their favourites are big action films heavy on computer animation or comedies.
Yin Hong, a scholar at Tsinghua University, says Youth is a representative work of Feng’s career.
He says the movie accurately recreates history, thanks to the costumes and the sets.
Zuo Heng, a researcher with the China Film Art Research Centre, observed that Feng “shuns the dark side of history to produce a comparatively shallow tale”.
Feng pioneered the concept of Chinese New Year hits with the comedy The Dream Factory, released in late 1997, paving the way for his rise into the rank of top directors.
But such comedies are quick cash-earners rather than artistic works.
Over the past decade, Feng has been shifting to serious themes, such as the 2006 war epic Assembly and the 2010 disaster drama Aftershock.
His 2015 arthouse film I Am Not Madame Bovary starring Fan Bingbing won a series of international awards. But it tanked at the box office. To date his best commercial performance has come from Personal Tailor (2013) with 710 million yuan. So, Youth could be a turning point for the 59year-old director, as investors need commercial balance for an artistic pursuit.
Zhang Weibo, head of Youth’s promotion team and founder of the Beijing-based marketing company Bravo Entertainment, figured the movie’s performance so far may earn it longer screening time and bring in more revenues.
Usually a movie is screened for around a month in cinemas in China, but sleeper hits can win a longer span, such as three months for Wolf Warrior 2, which eventually grossed US$854 million (RM3.5 billion).