Finding the right balance in co-productions
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Photo provided to China Daily |
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China prudently protects its film market. Every year, only 34 foreign films can be imported on revenue-sharing basis for theatrical release. Foreign studios get no more than 25 percent of the box office receipts.
However, a co-produced film acknowledged by the top regulator, the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and TV, is treated as a domestic film and thus exempt from the quota system.
Foreign studios, as a result, can share the revenue as per their agreements with Chinese partners.
Co-productions used to be perceived as an effective way to tap the Chinese market, where box-office receipts rose to 20 billion yuan ($3.2 billion) in 2013. This year, the revenue has so far reached 10 billion yuan, a 30 percent increase over the same period last year.
But it is not easy to be officially licensed as a co-production.
Since late 2010, SAPPRFT has tightened its control on the licensing of co-productions.
"A completely US story, some Chinese money, a few Chinese faces and some Chinese elements - these kind of films are not real co-productions," Zhang Pimin, the former deputy chief of the SAPPRFT, said in 2012.
Zhang had reiterated that in an officially acknowledged co-production, at least one-third of the lead cast should be Chinese, the story should have Chinese elements and there should be Chinese investors.
According to Chinese film producer Qiu Yan, in the absence of a proper rating system in China, filmmakers have to make sure that an audience aged from 4 to 80 can see the content they produce.
"On top of that, co-productions have to have organically integrated Chinese elements in the story. It takes a long time to get a script approved. Very often, investors are not that patient."
Ben Ji, a veteran film producer and managing director of Reach Glory says that very few films that adhere to the guidelines for co-productions are appreciated by Chinese or international audiences.
"Most of the usual prototypes are about foreign missionaries going to China or pilots in World War II - I know at least three projects on that, or stories about Pearl S. Buck, the American writer who lived in China," he says.
"People expect that a co-production is an easy subject that embodies Chinese stories and universal values. Putting these elements together does not necessarily mean it is a successful film."
