Big-screen stress
‘Bleak winter’ of Chinese film industry deepens as virus adds to censorship woes.
“I don’t pay much attention to the story. I care more about whether the screenplay is going to get past the censors and whether investors will get their money back”
LI BIN Chinese actor
Even before the coronavirus struck, people working in the Chinese entertainment industry had been bemoaning their “bleak winter” — as tighter censorship, a crackdown on tax evasion and new government restrictions strangle opportunities for work.
The epidemic is only exacerbating that misery.
Cinemas across China have closed as part of efforts to curb the outbreak. The premieres of seven expected blockbusters scheduled for the Lunar New Year holidays — a time when box offices usually rake it in — were postponed or cancelled.
Since Jan 24, the day the government warned against large gatherings in public and the day before the holidays, box office takings for the world’s most populous country have been almost negligible. Industry bodies have also asked actors not to return to work until further notice.
“I think China’s annual box office revenue will likely halve from last year due to the coronavirus outbreak. Nobody is going to a cinema until the danger has passed,” Qiu Hongtao, vice-president of Taihe Entertainment, a movie production and investment firm, told Reuters.
“We expect quite a lot of cinemas will go bankrupt. Actors and actresses may have to cope with a lack of work, but for cinemas, the rent and management cost burden will crush them.”
The epidemic, which as of last Thursday had claimed more than 1,300 lives, is forcing some production houses to make unconventional and controversial choices.
Huanxi Media Group released Lost
in Russia, a comedy that was widely expected to achieve blockbuster success on the big screen, on Bytedance’s online platforms free for consumers in return for 630 million yuan (US$90 million) to fund new films — a move that has infuriated China’s cinema industry.
The makers of the martial arts comedy Enter the Fat Dragon made a similar move, with the video streaming service iQiyi announcing a fee-based online release.
The virus-induced gloom comes at a time when the world’s second-biggest movie market has been in dire need of a shot in the arm.
While box office revenue climbed to a record 64 billion yuan ($9.2 billion) last year, helped by higher ticket prices, the average occupancy rate at Chinese theatres hit a five-year low, Tencent Entertainment said in a report last month.
Domestic movie-making — essential to sustaining the market as the government caps the number of major foreign releases allowed in any one year at 34 — has also been in a precipitous decline as censorship grows.
Content offensive to “core socialist values” has been banned since 2017 — part of the effort under President Xi Jinping to tighten controls on society. This has also included crackdowns on activists, internet regulation and the rise of government surveillance.
Last year, censors were especially sensitive as the country celebrated the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. At least 15 movies were either pulled, rescheduled or amended, according to media reports.
The biggest to fall victim was the World War II epic The Eight Hundred by director Guan Hu with a reported budget of $80 million. Its June release was suddenly cancelled at the last minute after retired Communist Party officials complained it glorified the heroism of the rival Kuomintang party.
Other movies are just not getting made. Beijing Enlight Media and Beijing Jingxi Culture had both planned 23 releases in 2019 but Enlight only released 11 while Jingxi Culture had just nine.
Creative freedom has shrunk so much that the China Independent Film Festival, one of the country’s longest-running and largest, said last month it had suspended operations indefinitely.
“It is impossible to organise a film festival that truly has a purely independent spirit,” the organisers said.
Nor is censorship expected to let up anytime soon as the Communist Party will be celebrating the hundredth anniversary of its founding in 2021.
New rules on salaries and intense government scrutiny of tax strategies used by some of China’s most wellknown faces have also been wreaking havoc within the industry. The crackdown resulted in A-list movie star
Fan Bingbing being slapped with a $129-million fine.
Between the scramble to get their taxes in order and censorship, nearly 1,900 movie production companies folded in 2019, domestic media have estimated.
For actors, it has meant a severe dearth of jobs in an already fiercely competitive industry. Actor Li Bin, 37, said the “bleak winter” has changed the way he and his peers approach work.
“Now if someone gives me a screenplay, the minute I get my hands on the script, the first thing I do is to pick on the stuff that cannot be shot,” he said.
“I don’t pay much attention to the story. I care more about whether the screenplay is going to get past the censors and whether investors will get their money back.”