New gods: Nezha reborn
▶ Foreign films face stiff competition in Chinese mainland market
The Chinese mainland film market has entered the epilogue of the Spring Festival holiday with a total box office of more than 7.8 billion yuan ($ 1.2 billion) stunning domestic as well as overseas moviegoers.
Seeing the recovery and rise of the market, major Hollywood filmmakers, such as Disney, are bringing their films to the mainland in order to get a piece of the pie.
The animated/ live action movie Tom & Jerry is the first imported film to test the waters, but looking at presales and Chinese netizens’ reaction to the film’s trailer, the film’s performance in the mainland may not live
up to Warner
Bros’ expectations.
Compared with the Chinese animated movie New Gods: Nezha Reborn, which grossed more than 350 million yuan during Spring Festival holiday and has a 7.3/ 10 on media review platform Douban, Tom & Jerry has only earned 4.59 million in presales, just one- seventh of Nezha Reborn’s presales before its debut.
The current situation for Tom & Jerry demonstrates that it will be more difficult than ever for foreign films to compete in China as the quality of Chinese films has sharply increased.
“The stories of Tom and Jerry are too old for Chinese audiences and the film does not find a new highlight to attract them,” Shi Chuan, vice chairman of the Shanghai Film Association, told the Global Times. “Its release date also has problems. Why not choose to debut in summer vacation?”
Other movies such as Raya and the Last Dragon and Godzilla VS Kong have been confirmed for release in the Chinese mainland. However, it is difficult to predict how Chinese audiences will react to them.
Because of the COVID- 19 pandemic around the world, many countries’
film industries have come to a standstill. Some Chinese netizens have lamented that the foreign films released right after the 2019 Spring Festival holiday, such as Alita: Battle Angel and Green Book, were of a far better quality than what is coming post- 2021 Spring Festival.
“The domestic market environment that Hollywood faces is far worse than what China faced a year ago. Although the entire industry was also in a state of anxiety in China, overall no one lost confidence in the film market, which is different from the current pessimistic sentiment toward the US market in Hollywood,” Xiao Fuqiu, film critic based in Shanghai, told the Global Times.