China falls in love with Hollywood once again
Print Edition
CHINA’S box office sales grew at their fastest pace in over a year in April, driven by the American action movie “The Fate of the Furious,” the eighth installment of the high-octane fast car franchise.
Monthly ticket sales jumped nearly 57 percent from the same period a year ago to US$707.5 million, data from the box office tracker EntGroup showed, the largest monthly growth since February last year.
China’s box office, a magnet for Hollywood producers, saw growth stall in 2016 amid weak movies and a crackdown on subsidies. Ticket sales grew under 4 percent last year, down sharply from around 50 percent growth in 2015.
After a stronger start this year, China ticket sales slid again in February and March. The sharp April rise came on the back of the latest outing from Universal’s hugely popular Fast and Furious franchise. The film, released in mid-April in China, has so far raked in US$362.7 million in the mainland market, EntGroup data showed.
Despite a slowdown in box office sales in the market, studios in the United States are looking to China to boost global revenues, though they face issues from a local quota system for imported films to questions over censorship.
Hollywood is lobbying to lift the official quota level of 34 imported films a year and to raise the share of sales that international partners receive, as a revenue-sharing deal struck in 2012 comes up for review this year.
“The Fate of the Furious” is the second-highest grossing movie of 2017 so far behind “Beauty and the Beast,” Box Office Mojo says.
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