China market both allures and deters

AFP/Cannes

In just a few years, China has become the world’s most enticing movie market, but the pitfalls there for foreign filmmakers are many, experts say.

Censorship, bureaucracy and piracy head the roster of concerns, according to specialists interviewed in China, Hong Kong and at the Cannes Film Festival.

“China is extremely complicated when it comes to the cinema,” said Jerome Paillard, director of the Marche du Film, or Movie Market, a meeting point at Cannes that gathers 10,000 buyers and sellers in the world cinema business.

“Film makers are growing more wary of China, not only because of its strict censorship policies, but also because of the strong protectionist measures the Chinese film authorities take to protect their films,” said Robert Cain, a producer who has worked in China 25 years.

Box-office receipts in China jumped 30% last year to 17bn yuan ($2.7bn), making it the world’s second-largest film market after the United States.

Each day, 10 new movie screens open, as entrepreneurs eye a growing middle class that is able and willing to fork out $13 for a seat in a multiplex.

Over the last decade, according to trade industry figures, China has seen a tenfold in increase in the number of screens, to more than 13,000 at the end of 2012.

Yet this still represents only one per 220,000 people compared with one per 9,000 in the United States.

But the place allotted to foreign films in cinema screenings is meagre.

There is an annual cap of just 34 foreign releases, although this in itself represents an increase of 14 films – a rise that took effect in 2012 after the United States exerted pressure at the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

The movies have to be in 3-D or IMAX format under the US-Chinese deal, which also nearly doubles the share of revenue to 25%, that is repatriated to the foreign film owner.

Despite these restrictions, foreign films accounted for half of cinema revenue in 2012. Chinese films – a whopping 893 last year – made up the rest.

“The successful movies (in China) are nearly all Hollywood blockbusters,” Pen Kang, a researcher at the Hong Kong Baptist University of Film, said in January. “Chinese domestic films have no advantages compared to these Hollywood films. The production standards and technology are less advanced.”

Iron Man 3 is a potent symbol of this. The latest yarn of the Marvel Comic superhero took in 410 million yuan (more than $66mn) in its first five days after debuting on May 1.

It displaced from the top slot So Young, a domestic film about love on a campus, according to the specialist website China Film News.

But to get their precious product into a Chinese cinema, movie companies also have to satisfy the censor.

“When you want to distribute a film in China, there are always lengthy talks with the state licensing authorities,” said Eric Garandeau, director of France’s National Cinema Centre (CNC). “You mustn’t include the ‘three Ts’ – Tibet, Tiananmen and Taiwan – and you can’t have any story that involves ghosts and sex.”

One prominent casualty was Cloud Atlas, a German-US sci-fi epic with Tom Hanks, into which Chinese investors ironically pumped more than $10mn, making it the biggest Chinese financial commitment to any foreign film.

China’s State Administration of Radio Film and Television (SARFT) chopped 40 minutes out of its original 172 minutes, gutting a story line that involved homosexuality.

“It sucks, really,” co-director Lana Wachowski was quoted as saying by china.org.cn, a website under the information department of the State Council, China’s cabinet.

“But I believe you can watch the full version online,” Wachowski said, in a rather unexpected pointer to the country’s flourishing online piracy.

Another problem is that rules of censorship are opaque, making them subject to bureaucratic whim and other dealings.

That causes delays which can badly damage a film’s chances against competitors. The later a film is shown in cinemas, the likelier it is that it will have been watched illegally by those who are interested in it.

“It is extremely stressful and worrying for a western producer or seller to sign a contract with a Chinese distributor, given the relatively likely risk that at some point the film will not be imported for censorship reasons,” said Paillard.

Experts cite the case of Quentin Tarantino’s spaghetti western, Django Unchained, about a former slave who wants to free his wife from the clutches of a plantation owner.

It was pulled from Chinese cinemas just before its opening on April 11 when the authorities intervened for “technical reasons”.

A month later, it was okayed, minus three minutes of scenes that featured violence and sex.

But instead of being screened in 17% of Chinese cinemas, it opened in only 10% of them, at a time when Iron Man 3 and So Young were still riding high and newcomers Oblivion and The Croods were hitting the screens.

In the all-important first weekend, it ranked just fifth in takings, bringing in the equivalent of just $600,000, according to the Hollywood Reporter.