The H Collective To Produce Three Movies Featuring Li Bingbing and TFBoys’ Karry Wang
The H Collective, a newly-launched film finance, production, marketing, and distribution company based in Los Angeles, is signing Chinese actors to be in its first few productions; among them, actress Li Bingbing, who previously appeared on Transformers 4: Age of Extinction, and pop idol Karry Wang (Wang Junkai), a member of the teenage boy band TFBoys. The H Collective has worked with director James Gunn in the past, and the company’s first movie, The Parts You Lose, is currently in production. Read more on Mtime
China Box office To Surpass North America By 2020, But What’s Next?
With a record-breaking high of 55.9 billion yuan ($8.6 billion) in total box office in 2017, many have been comparing the Chinese and North American box offices and predicting that the China box office will surpass the latter by 2020. Industry experts looked a few different factors resulting in the projections, including annual growth, trends, and overall patterns. One key factor for growth is that international films are very well-accepted in China, and not just Hollywood films, so that even when domestic films are not performing well, China is able to import more films to save the box office. However, some argue that it is unclear how much of the total box office can be attributed to ticket sales as service fees, market subsidies and fraud have to all be taken into account. The impressive box office numbers do not necessarily indicate the prosperity of cultural and creative industries in China, and growth of the film industry as a whole cannot be measured by numbers only. Read more on yulechanye
Gangster Animation “Have A Nice Day” Stumbles At Box Office
Premiered at the Berlin Film Festival and awarded Best Animation at the Golden Horse Awards, Liu Jian’s animated dark comedy opened to only less than 2 million yuan ($310,000) in three days, much to the director’s disappointment. The film released a trailer marketing itself as an “animation for adults,” but to the majority of Chinese audiences, it was not clear what that meant. Have A Nice Day was also promoted as a film on money-related crimes, which may have failed to arouse interest among Chinese moviegoers. Additionally, many questioned the reason why it was presented as an animated film instead of live action. Read more entgroup.cn
“All The Money In The World” Gets China Release Date in March After Reshoots
After Kevin Spacey’s multiple accusations of sexual assault and subsequent replacement in the All The Money In The World, the crew had to reshoot scenes involving Spacey after it had been completed. The reshoots took 9 days and cost over $10 million. On Spacey’s removal from the film and having to reshoot last minute, the cast members expressed mutual feelings hoping that the film will not be affected by Kevin Spacey’s accusations. The film is set to release in China on March 2nd, 2018. Read more on Mtime
