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Film festival ticket sales top 6m yuan on opening day
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FANS of the silver screen snapped up more than 6 million yuan (US$960,000) worth of tickets yesterday for the upcoming 17th Shanghai International Film Festival.
Group and individual tickets, priced from 40 to 60 yuan, went on sale at 35 cinemas across the city, including the Shanghai Film Art Center, Yonghua Cinema and Wanda International Cinema. Movie buffs were also able to buy online at gewara.com and ticket2010.com.
Takings on the first day of sales were up 50 percent from last year, the event’s organizers said.
This year’s festival, which runs from June 14-22, will feature about 900 screenings of about 300 classic and contemporary foreign and domestic films. All will be presented in their original versions with both Chinese and English subtitles.
Despite the hot weather, crowds of people flocked to the festival’s main site — the Shanghai Film Art Center — early yesterday to ensure they bagged the best seats.
According to Gu Yan, its deputy general manager, some of the most popular movies were Japan’s “Like Father, Like Son” and “I Just Wanna Hug You,” and Hollywood favorites such as “The Godfather: Part II” and “The Age of Innocence.”
“We’ve already taken more than 1 million yuan,” Gu said.
“Tickets for a lot of the prime-time screenings sold out within hours. People seem to be a lot more enthusiastic this year, which is probably due to our promotional efforts on Weibo and WeChat,” he said.
Retired teacher Li Ying said she bought tickets for the acclaimed 2013 drama “Dallas Buyers Club” and Japan’s “Like Father, Like Son.”
“My daughter is a film enthusiast, so I’m looking forward to us enjoying the movies together,” she said.
“We spent a lot of time last night looking online to decide which movies appealed to us the most.”
IT worker Alex Wu said he is a big fan of Oscar-winner Nicole Kidman and was thrilled when he discovered she will attend the festival’s opening ceremony. Yesterday he bought tickets for the 46-year-old actor’s latest offering “Grace of Monaco.”
“The movie hasn’t been released in China yet, so it’s a rare opportunity for my wife and I to watch the film at a local theater,” he said.
At the Yonghua Cinema, tickets for the French crime drama “Zulu,” and restored versions of “Les Miserables” and “The Lady From Shanghai” were the most sought after.
Employee Li Qijun said that almost 300,000 yuan worth of tickets were sold on the opening day, or about 80 percent of the total available for the 50 or so planned screenings.
Shanghai-based website gewara.com said its sales were up 54 percent from last year at about 2.7 million yuan.
Among the best-sellers were “Grace of Monaco,” Woody Allen’s “Blue Jasmine” and the Japanese thriller “The Snow White Murder Case,” it said.
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