China box office powers to six-month record
BEIJING: Home-made blockbusters Operation Red Sea and Detective Chinatown 2 powered the box office in China to its best- ever first six months of the year.
Domestic productions accounted for nearly 60 per cent of receipts, a significant increase from the same period last year.
According to the half-year industry report from China’s Ent Group, box office for the first six months of 2018 totalled 31.6 billion yuan ( RM19.08 billion), with 889 million viewers, up more than 16 per cent from the 27.2 billion yuan recorded in the first half of 2017.
Domestic productions accounted for 18.8 billion yuan, or 59.6 per cent, of the total. It was a massive increase from the 10.5 billion yuan that accounted for 39 per cent of total box office during the same period last year. Of the 40 movies released this year that have achieved more than 100 million yuan ( RM60 million), 18 were domestic productions.
The wild success of homegrown films was driven largely by military blockbuster Operation Red Sea and crime thriller Detective Chinatown 2. The former raked in more than 3.6 billion yuan , becoming the second-highest grossing film of all time in China after last year’s Wolf Warrior 2. Detective Chinatown 2 grossed 3.4 billion yuan, while fantasy comedy Monster Hunt 2 took in 2.2 billion yuan
Box office records show Chinese audiences continue to embrace foreign-language films produced outside of Hollywood, particularly Bollywood. So far this year, four of the five bestperforming films imported into China for a flat fee (instead of for revenue- sharing) were Indian titles, with Bajrangi Bhaijaan on top, with 285 million yuan. Secret Superstar, co-produced by Aamir Khan and imported on a revenue- sharing basis, scored the most out of all Indian films in China, earning 747 million yuan.
China overtook North America as the world’s biggest movie market in the first quarter of 2018 but lost the throne midyear, with North American box office hitting nearly US$ 6 billion through June.