Week 3- Chinese Films in the US: Not a full house

This article is about a phenomenon that has been happening for a while- Chinese films in the US are not fairing as well as they hoped. Ironically, one of the main problems is the audience- there aren't many westerners there, and it's causing ticket sales to suffer. According to the statistics from EntGroup, international revenue for Chinese films declined to about $170 million in 2012 from about $330 million in 2011. In the past, Chinese films were highly successful in the US market. Movies like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon dominated the box office, and made $128 million. 

I found this article to be extremely interesting, because one wouldn't usually think that the reason why Chinese films are failing in the box office is because of the Chinese audience itself. The main audiences of today's Chinese films in the US are mainly Chinese students. The Chinese films today are played only in a very limited number of theaters and last for a very short time, so that may also be one of the problems that they face.

The past successes of the Chinese films in the us market was surprising to me, for I had no idea about the scope of the success of certain movies. The decline, however, can be explained by Stanley Rosen, a professor at USC. "The genre of Chinese film being distributed in the US has also changed. The most successful Chinese films in the US market before 2006 were action movies or martial arts movies, and dramas directed by famous directors such as Ang Lee, Zhang Yimou, Chen Kaige and Wong Kar-wai. On the 2012 list of the most successfully distributed Chinese films in the US, the number of action movies or martial arts movies declined and romantic comedies increased." This change in genre vastly affects the sales of movies, and results in a ranking Chinese film industry.

Despite these hardships, distributors in china still remain hopeful. They believe the film industry is in a transition period, and that the digital platform is the future. Theaters may be for the big budget, but they will always have extremely profitable franchises to build upon. It will be an interesting and exciting journey to see where this film industry goes in the future. 

http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/2013-08/30/content_16932154.htm

Munoz, J. (2014, March 24). CinemaCon: Hollywood Tested By New Distribution Models. Retrieved December 12, 2014, from http://variety.com/2014/film/features/new-distribution-models-create-tug-of-war-between-studios-theaters-1201144965/