Too early to celebrate the box office, film experts say

Despite the nation's booming box office, a top official and film moguls sounded a cautionary note about the future of the Chinese film industry.

The 2010 box office earnings of Chinese films had reached 7.5 billion yuan ($110 million) by September, says Zhang Hongsen, vice president of the State Film Bureau, the industry's top regulator. The box office income for the whole of 2009 was 6.2 billion yuan.

"By the end of this year, the box office will hit a record 10 billion yuan," he told a seminar hosted by Beijing Film Academy.

The year will also see the making of a record 500 feature films, Zhang says. Yet the script writer-turned official thinks it is not yet time to celebrate.

"Despite the growth in box office, we are witnessing a lack of creativity, which is bothering many filmmakers," he says.

Many domestic films, he believes, are focused on format not content, giving importance to technology over artistic values. Some are blind copies of blockbusters.

While Zhang did not take any names, the reference to the craze for 3D, post-Avatar was obvious.

A total of 15 3D films have come on stream in 2010, in the animation, kungfu and disaster genres among others, but none has been acknowledged as making the cut, including the latest Don Quixote, which premiered on Oct 15. The only parts of the film with consistent 3D effects were the subtitles.

Zhang also expressed concern about the regional gap in access to films.

By June, at least three new screens were being built every day, doubling the number of last year. But cineplexes exist only in big and mid-sized cities, mainly in East China, while in many small cities and rural areas, there is just no concept of cinema.

Wang Zhongjun, chairman of Huayi Brothers, the largest private media group in China and the producer of such blockbusters as Feng Xiaogang's Aftershock, the highest-grossing local film so far, shares Zhang's worries.

"Rising numbers do not necessarily mean growth," he says. "I can say that 400 of the 500 films this year cannot break even."

The main problem is the protection of intellectual property.

"Without effective intellectual property protection, everything is just an illusion," he says.

His competitor Yu Dong, president of the production and distribution company Polybona, however, thinks the problem lies in the choice of stories.

"We are still dealing with the same topics we focused on when we only made 100 films a year," he says. "It is a huge waste of money and results in a number of copycat films."