China’s Rising Film Industry

November 27, 2012

“China is now the second-biggest box office territory for Hollywood films, eclipsing Japan,” says The Hollywood Reporter. Not only that, but Chinese production companies are releasing films for the home market.

In fact, a recent science fiction movie, Looper, became the first new Hollywood film to make more money in its opening weekend in China than in the US. Source: Guardian UK

It also appears that the Chinese government has done some forgiving. “Zhang Zhao fled China for the U.S. soon after the crushing of the 1989 student democracy movement. But Mr. Zhang returned to China in 1998, and now he’s the man with the money: As head of Enlight Pictures, a unit of Enlight Media and one of the new film companies aspiring to tell Chinese stories to a rapidly expanding domestic audience, he has plans for an initial slate of 40 movies, and no problem with financing.” Source: RealFilmCareer.com

A film produced by Huayi Brothers Media

Then there is Huayi Brothers Media, which the May issue of “The Hollywood Reporter” says raised 160 million in an IPO on the Zhenzhen stock exchange.  The Huayi brothers have already released over 50 films, most of them huge box office hits in China. Source: CNN: Is This China’s Harvey Weinstein?

“Five years ago,” Wang Zhongjun said, “we hoped (the Hollywood studios) could bring us support and investments. Now we’re helping them,” reports The Hollywood Reporter, which predicts box office gross in China could exceed 10 billion yuan by the end of 2010.

Discover Going to School with Dad on My Back

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine SagaWhen you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

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Blockbusters from China

June 23, 2010

After China opened its doors to the world in 1980, Chinese entrepreneurs conquered one global manufacturing industry after another except one. In 2009, The Chosun IIbo said there are 875,000 millionaires in China including 55,000 with more than 100 million yuan and almost 2 thousand billionaires. One of those billionaires wants to conquer that last frontier.

The NY Times says that one of China’s richest men, Jon Jiang, wants to equal tinsel town by producing a move that has ancient Greek warriors, pirates, underwater kingdoms and more by using mostly American actors and 3/D technology.  The big difference is ” Empires of the Deep” is being produced in a studio near Beijing.

Jiang is not the only wealthy capitalist in China who wants to build a Chinese Hollywood. I’ve written about Zhang Zhao heading Enlight Pictures and another production company run by the Huayi brothers, who have collaborated with Sony and Disney. Source: Hollywood to Bollywood to a Rising Chinawood

Then there is the new Karate Kid, co-produced between an American Studio and China and was filmed in and around Beijing, which has earned close to 84 million globally as I get ready to schedule this post.

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the author of the award winning My Splendid Concubine and writes The Soulful Veteran and Crazy Normal.

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