Theater screens filmed over with 3-D

A boy poses in front of the movie poster of The Amazing Spider-Man 2 at a cinema in Yichang, Hubei province. Liu Junfeng / for China Daily

Explosive growth

The explosive growth in box office returns in China has a lot to do with the rapid expansion of theaters and the rising number of screens. Speaking at a 3-D industry forum in April, Hou Tao, vice-president of EntGroup Consulting, said the number of 3-D screens in China has increased from 700 in 2009 to the 19,000 today, with the percentage of 3-D screens among digital screens increasing from 15 percent to 82 percent.

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By the end of March, the total number of screens in China had crossed 20,000, with more than 95 percent of them being digital.

"But the market for 3-D screens is still far from saturated," says Shen Hongxiang, chief operating officer of Soulpower Culture Media Co, a leading stereoscopic 3-D film and TV production company.

The popularity of 3-D movies has prompted many domestic film companies to pursue the industry's trend, but the audience response they have got differs tremendously. "I can hardly remember a domestic film released in 3-D format," Zhang says when asked to name a domestic 3-D film.

A few minutes later, she names The Monkey King, a domestic production released on Jan 31, which depicts the story of the Monkey King in heaven before he joins his master on a journey to the west. It was the highest-grossing film in the first quarter of the year in China, raising 1.05 billion yuan at the box office.

But Zhang regrets spending 60 yuan to watch it. "The whole plot stinks, and the visual effects are just like an animated feature. I didn't like it at all," she says.

Five of the all-time top 10 box office hits in China are domestic productions, with four of them being in 3-D format. The other five, all Hollywood movies, were either in 3-D or Imax format.

Chinese filmgoers prefer to spend on Hollywood 3-D productions rather than domestic flicks because of the latter's poor quality. In fact, some Chinese films are offered in the 3-D format just to make more money, because ticket prices for 3-D movies are a lot higher than 2-D movies, Shen says.

"A ticket for a 3-D film costs at least one-third more than that of a 2-D film," Peng says.