the EARTHQUAKE film popular in China and Korea
Saturday, 21 January 2011
The other day I wrote about the fact that the
number of attendances in Korea was the lowest
it had been for the last 5 years.
Today I am going write about
the rising dragon (meaning “powerful”) China.
In 2010 the Chinese box office had a 64% rise.
It was 62 billion one thousand million Chinese yuan
(about 781 million yen) in 2009, rising to
100 billion two thousand million yuan (1,284 billion yen) in 2010.
Fresh in our memory is the record attendance’s of
1,300 million in Korea for TSUNAMI.
The most successful film in China last year was
TANGSHAN EARTHQUAKE, where the attendances topped
2,000 million. It is also a disaster films.
(However, it is a melodrama, not just a disaster film.
The film will open in Japan through Shochiku
Distribution on the 26th of March).
© 2010 Tangshan Broadcast and Television Media Co., Ltd.
Huayi Brothers Media Corporation/Media Asia Films (BVI) Limited
The number of Chinese films produced rose by
15% over the previous year with 526 productions.
In 2000 it was 83 films, so it is an amazing
increase over the last ten years.
In China, the government controls film making.
SARFT (State Administration of Radio, Film and Television)
looks at the content of the films and administers them.
It is an approval system. Underground films, so it is said,
are still made outside of this approval system.
In China at present the digitisation of cinema
is progressing at a tremendous velocity.
It is said that China will be the first country
in the world to fully digitise all its cinema’s.
Recently I heard the news that China ordered
a large quantity of digital projectors from NEC.
Everything in China “goes fast”.
By the way…
In Korea, 824 million people watched AVATAR,
which equates to a box office of about 204 billion yen in China.
This amounts to 10% of the total world box office for the film.
All of this despite the fact that AVATAR was prevented from
showing in the cinema up to the end of its run.
With a population of 13 billion the power of China is really amazing.
McKinsey & Company predicted in 2008 the city populations of China
would continue to increase. Last year, the market was worth
1,200 billion yen, and this will rise to 3,600 billion yen within 5 years.
Attendances are estimated to rise to 11 billion people in that time.
By the way, the admission fees in China are 18 dollars for 3D
and 12 dollars for 2D films. We feel that it is cheaper
because of the strength of the yen,
but it almost the same admission charge as that in Japan.
It is obvious that the market for film in China is extremely large.
Hollywoods hunt for Japanese animation and Manga originals
has wained to the point where it has all but dried up.
However, they are opening branches in China and investing there.
Everyone will point to this being the tone of
the entertainment industry in China.
“It makes sense!”
