THE year of 2019 is another milestone for China’s film industry, as eight of the year’s top 10 highest-grossing films in the domestic market are Chinese films.

The Chinese mainland’s box office hit an all-time high with a total of 63.7 billion yuan (US$9.1 b) as of Sunday. It remains a difficult task, however, for Chinese films to draw North American moviegoers and make their mark there.

Nonetheless, there is reason to be hopeful. Two major Chinese-language film distributors in North America have fared much better in 2019 than previous years.

CMC Pictures has released 11 Chinese films, earning US$10.66 million in North America as of Saturday. China’s first homemade sci-fi blockbuster “The Wandering Earth” became the highest-grossing Chinese film in North America in the last five years, earning US$5.87 million. It’s a great leap for the distributor, which released only five Chinese films in North America in 2018, which grossed US$727,000.

Another distributor, Well Go USA Entertainment, released 14 Chinese-language films in 2019, more than doubling its North American box office from 2018’s US$4.01 million to US$9.84 million as of Saturday. The company released nine Chinese-language films in 2018.

The Chinese animated megahit “Ne Zha” was released by Well Go USA in North America with a cume of US$3.67 million. It’s the top-grossing animated film made by China and No. 2 on the box office chart of all films screened on the Chinese mainland. The box office hit has grossed more than US$700 million worldwide.

Over the last two decades, Chinese filmmakers have been flooding top U.S. film schools like USC, UCLA, NYU and AFI to learn Hollywood’s “secret sauce” that has enabled Tinseltown to dominate the motion picture industry for the past 100 years.

Challenges

These skill sets have translated into astonishing success for filmmakers in China’s domestic market. In contrast, only around 7 percent of Chinese box office revenues come from overseas sales, while for Hollywood films, nearly 70 percent of box office revenues come from overseas.

The box office revenues of “The Wandering Earth” in North America are 0.8 percent of its global cume while the North American box office revenues of “Ne Zha” account for only 0.5 percent of its global cume. Even these mostly came from overseas Chinese moviegoers.

Frequent complaints about Chinese fare range from “too different to identify with,” or “too long, rambling and confusing,” or simply “too Chinese.”

The difference in stories and storytelling styles is significant, because Chinese films usually have a different format and pace than Hollywood’s more popular three-act linear format, and stories unique to China are unfamiliar to Westerners.

“China has thousands of years of legends, folk tales and myths that the West knows nothing about and cannot identify with,” said Hollywood producer Jeff Most.

“These are rich cultural traditions China wants to share, but they need to be introduced to Western audiences in a way that highlights the universal aspects of the story that everyone can relate to, rather than the more nuanced cultural references that are impenetrable or confusing to Westerners.”

A similar view is shared by Chris McGurk, chairman and CEO of Cinedigm, a cross-border streaming service provider and DVD distributor.

Besides storytelling, McGurk said language can be a serious barrier.

American audiences are notoriously opposed to reading subtitles, and the dubbing on Chinese films has been poorly done for decades.

Some U.S. audiences display a tendency to prefer watching characters on screen that look and behave like them, making it harder for movies with an all-Chinese cast to attract larger Western audiences, though Chinese or Chinese-American stars like Jackie Chan, Bruce Lee and Awkwafina have had no trouble being accepted by U.S. audiences.

“A big challenge with Chinese films in global markets is in telling relatable stories,” said Richard Yu, Cinema Escapist’s Asia editor.

Future outlook

“I’ve long thought that there are a set of particular stigmas placed on Asian cinema, both by the Western critical establishment and by general audiences ... and these stigmas affect the potential of an Asian film’s box office,” said Sam C. Mac, a film critic for Slant Magazine. He added that some moviegoers still view Asian cinema in its stereotypes, as a form of genre entertainment, represented by martial arts movies and Hong Kong gangster films.

“While it won’t always be a winning formula, I think films that are earnest and honest in their expression of Chinese culture have a better chance at critical and audience acceptance than those that try to emulate Western formulas and consider cultural identifiers as merely an afterthought,” Mac said.

“To some extent, Chinese capital being more involved will help increase the understanding of global cinematic tastes and the improvement of technical skills in production. Reaching global audiences for Chinese movies will require filmmakers to tell diverse stories with universal appeal,” said Anthony Kao, editor-in-chief of Cinema Escapist.

Some Hollywood insiders think China’s huge domestic market has made it unnecessary for Chinese filmmakers to gamble millions on an attempt to try to decipher the complexities of an unfamiliar and poorly understood international market.

Andre Morgan, co-founder of Ruddy Morgan Films, said, “The truth is that China has not focused on the American market yet. Historically, the Chinese industry over the past 20 years has been very focused on rebuilding its domestic markets and production capabilities.”

“They did not really make films for international consumption, but that will change as China consolidates its domestic market and looks for new horizons,” Morgan added.

(Xinhua)