FILM | Mainland’s meteoric box-office rise

A new box-office champion is coming soon to China – and the world.
‘Avengers: Age of Ultron’, debuting in China on May 12, is poised to overtake `Furious 7’ as the Asian nation’s top-grossing movie, based on pre-release bookings. That’s no small feat since the latest chapter in the car-themed series was almost 14 percent bigger at the Chinese box office than in the U.S. and Canada, with USD385 million so far.
‘Avengers’ reservations have been double those in the run-up to ‘Furious 7’, according to Shanghai-based ticketing agency Gewara.com. The superhero sequel would be the sixth film to exceed $200 million in China, data compiled by Bloomberg from EntGroup Inc. and Box Office Mojo show.
“American audiences have diversified tastes and a lot more choice,” said Peng Kan, an analyst in Beijing at Legend Media Co. “But Chinese favor Hollywood films because they deliver more action, surprises and better special effects.”
China’s potential has surged with a quadrupling of theater screens since 2010, to more than 24,300 at the end of 2014, versus 43,300 screens in the U.S., according to EntGroup and the Motion Picture Association of America’s website.
Expansion, growing incomes and urbanization helped boost China’s total box office by 34 percent last year to $4.8 billion. The U.S./Canada total fell 5 percent to $10.4 billion, according to MPAA.
That means Chinese revenue is getting close to half the U.S. level, about double the proportion in 2012. China actually exceeded the U.S. domestic box office in February, according to the nation’s statistics bureau, a breakthrough helped by bad weather in U.S., while most Chinese had a weeklong holiday for Lunar New Year.
China at the top won’t be a rarity soon. Bloomberg Intelligence forecasts it to become the world’s biggest market in five years. Wang Fenglin, deputy director of the China Film Producers’ Association, told Xinhua News Agency in November that the handover will be in three years. Zhang Xuejing, co-chief executive officer of Gewara.com, expects the Chinese box office this year to expand by about the same pace in 2014, to as much as $6.4 billion.
The Chinese market comes with limits, including a current cap of 34 foreign films that can be shown annually. Those must be marketed through two state-owned companies, Huaxia Film Distribution Co. or China Film Group Corp. ‘American Sniper,’ ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ and ‘The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water’ are among recent releases not shown in China.
Of the 10 biggest box-office earners in China, five were Hollywood imports. The top locally produced films were ‘Lost in Thailand,’ a comedy about a group of Chinese on vacation in 2012, and ‘Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons’ in 2013.
Price is another limit. The average ticket in China was $5.79 last year, compared with $8.17 in the U.S./Canada. That means 41 percent more Chinese need to see a movie for the same revenue. One area China has a clear advantage is population, with 1.36 billion people compared to 319 million in the U.S. and 35 million in Canada. Malcolm Scott, Bloomberg