Blockbuster year for China's film industry

Champion

For anyone who is interested in Chinese cinema, the success of the homegrown blockbuster Wolf Warrior 2 has been hard to ignore.

As the highest-grossing film in Chinese cinematic history at 5.68 billion yuan, it accounted for 10 percent of the total takings of 2017 and brought in nearly 70 percent more than The Mermaid, the second biggest movie of all time at the Chinese box office, which generated 3.39 billion yuan in 2016.

A showcase for actor-director Wu Jing's death-defying stunts, the story follows a former Chinese special forces veteran's heroic efforts to evacuate Chinese citizens stuck in an African war zone.

Most Chinese critics regard the movie as having reinvented the genre of modern military films by setting the model for a commendable blend of mainstream values and commercial success.

"The movie not only created a miracle in the domestic market, but also broke the Hollywood 'monopoly' in the global box-office charts," says Yin Hong, a professor with Tsinghua University.

After becoming the first non-Hollywood movie to crack the top-100 list of all-time highest grossing movies globally in August, Wolf Warrior 2's latest triumph is to celebrate being listed as the sixth highest-earning blockbuster worldwide in 2017 by industry tracker Box Office Mojo.

And as 2017 North American box-office takings dipped 2.3 percent year-on-year, Hollywood has been pleasantly surprised by its success in China.

Seven US movies, including The Fate of the Furious, the second highest-grossing movie in China last year, earned more in China than they did in the United States.

While Hollywood blockbusters still remain the Chinese film industry's biggest rival, domestic titles managed to nose out imports by raking in a total of 30.1 billion yuan to account for nearly 54 percent of the annual box-office receipts of 2017.

Four of China's five top-earning movies in 2017 were made by Chinese filmmakers, including Never Say Die, Kung Fu Yoga and Journey to the West: The Demons Strike Back, and all of them featured strong comedic elements.

"Domestic filmmakers know more about the mentality of Chinese audiences and the key to tickling their funny bone. It's difficult to export humor across borders and it often doesn't translate well internationally," says Zuo Heng, a researcher with China Film Archives.

Besides, Hollywood's cautious approach to financing in recent years has filled the big screen with a slew of superhero movies and action-packed sequels. The days when Chinese fans once admired formulaic US blockbusters seem to be disappearing as domestic audiences become picky and grow tired of stereotypes.

For instance, Michael Bay's Transformers: The Last Knight scored only 4.8 points on Chinese film-review website Douban, the lowest rating among the five installments of the franchise. Tom Cruise's The Mummy also ended up as a flop, earning just 4.7 points.