Hollywood flicks sidelined as Chinese films improve

LOS ANGELES: Hollywoodmade films are being sidelined because the quality of Chineselanguage movies have markedly improved. That’s the view of Rance Pow, CEO of consultancy Artisan Gateway, at the fifth annual US-China Film & Television Industry Expo held in downtown Los Angeles.

“The fact of the matter is that Chinese-language films are getting better,” he conceded.

Six films have earned more than US$300 million at the Chinese box office in 2018 to date, but only one — Marvel and Disney’s Avengers: Infinity War (US$359.5 million) — was from Hollywood.

Explained Pow: “(Chinese films) in fact are getting very good, and without the crutch of the regulatory environment — they are simply connecting very strongly with their audience.”

Citing figures, Pow added: “Hollywood studio product is down 24 per cent so far this year in China. On a year-to-date basis, Chinese-language films are out-preforming while imports are underperforming.”

With nearly three-quarters of 2018 elapsed, total tickets sales for US studio imports have fallen to 11.3 billion yuan (RM6.9 billion) from 15 billion yuan during the same period in 2017. Meanwhile, Hollywood’s shortfall has been “more than made up for by a surge in Chinese-language box office,” Pow explained.

Thanks to the huge gains of locally produced titles, China’s total box office remains up a healthy 13.7 per cent for the year so far.

Figured Pow: “This is interesting because there’s lots of talk in the industry about the difficulties of creating, distributing and marketing films in China, but the results we’re seeing this year are simply a fact of a (Hollywood) product cycle that isn’t being taken up as quickly by the Chinese audience.”