Village Roadshow Travels To China 威秀登陆中国电影市场
A new announcement from US movie producer Village Roadshow is once again casting a spotlight on the growing love affair between Hollywood and China, which is showing no signs of slowing as the relationship celebrates its first anniversary. The announcement also highlights the huge potential of China’s box-office, whose rapid growth is being partly fueled by relaxation of rules that are suddenly allowing a lot more foreign-produced and funded movies into China. The Village Roadshow announcement also reflects the growing influence in China of locally made movies, which can do quite well by combining Hollywood skills with movie makers more familiar with Chinese tastes.
In this case, Village Roadshow is trumpeting the success of 2 such locally-made movies funded by its Asia arm, Village Roadshow Pictures Asia, which was launched just 2 years ago. One of those movies, “Journey to the West”, has been a sensation at the box office over the Chinese New Year holiday, breaking records. (company announcement)
Village Roadshow Asia produced the picture with Huayi Bros (Shenzhen: 300027), a well respected local production house. The film’s production was also overseen by Stephen Chow, one of Hong Kong’s most successful makers of comedy kung-fu films. Huayi’s China-listed shares have been on a rally of their own since the movie’s release, gaining about 50 percent since the end of January.
Following its strong opening, “Journey” looks set to break the all-time box office record of 1.3 billion yuan which was set just last month by another locally made low-budget comedy “Lost in Thailand.” (previous post) Before the success of “Journey” and “Thailand”, Hollywood-made productions had mostly dominated China’s all-time box office record book.
In addition to boasting of the strong performance from “Journey”, Village Roadshow’s announcement also trumpeted the more modest success of the other movie from its Asian arm so far, the romantic picture “Say Yes!”, which led the box office on this year’s Valentine’s Day with 47 million yuan in ticket sales.
The success of the 2 films nicely underscores the potent combination that can result when Hollywood works with local Chinese movie makers, bringing together sophisticated film-making and marketing skills with strong understanding of local tastes. Look for a growing number of these kinds of films combining Hollywood and local Chinese production talent to come out in the years ahead, as filmmakers try to capitalize on a box office likely to pass the US to become the world’s largest over the next 2 decades.
The new Hollywood-China love affair began about a year ago when Beijing announced it would sharply raise the annual quota of foreign films allowed into the country after years of limiting the number. That announcement was followed by news of a number of major new tie-ups, including ones that saw DreamWorks Animation (NYSE: DWA) and Disney (NYSE: DIS) set up major new animation joint ventures with Chinese partners.
I’ve said before that there’s always the chance that Beijing could grow alarmed at this fast-developing love affair and launch one of its periodic crackdowns on the industry. But the success of locally made productions like “Journey” and “Thailand” should help to ease some concerns of a growing foreign invasion, meaning we’re likely to see this love affair continue to develop in the year ahead. If things move on their current track, we could even see some films like “Journey” and “Thailand” start to get exported to other Asian markets, which will undoubtedly please officials in Beijing.
Bottom line: Hollywood’s growing love affair with China looks set to result in a growing number of locally-produced films for Chinese viewers, with more new tie-ups likely to come this year.
Related postings 相关文章:
