A touch of Seoul in Chinese films

Joint productions by Chinese and South Korean filmmakers, such as A Wedding Invitation, is a win-win for the movie markets in both countries.[Photo provided to China Daily]

"We try to provide with our resources what the Chinese market is short of. Thus we can achieve a win-win situation," he adds.

As one of the earliest South Korean movie companies to enter the Chinese market, CJ E&M has participated in producing a few Chinese films, including Sophie's Revenge (2009), its first joint production in China, starring Zhang Ziyi and Fan Bingbing, and What Women Want (2011), starring Gong Li and Andy Lau.

Though they pitched in with some thoughts for the scripts of both productions, says Lee, they mainly served as partial investors.

Last year, A Wedding Invitation marked the first attempt by CJ E&M to control the production of a Chinese film "from beginning to end", managing all aspects of moviemaking from writing to marketing.

"When I showed the film to a Chinese distribution company before post-production started, they thought it was a purely Chinese film yet of an exceptional quality. That's when I felt rather proud of our South Korean production team," says Lee.

The romantic film earned nearly 200 million yuan ($32 million) on the mainland, making it arguably the highest-grossing Chinese-South Korean production and a source of confidence for CJ E&M to carry on with its future plans that include at least four new films next year.

The movie collaboration between China and South Korea goes back at least 15 years. In 2000, China Film Co-production Corp and Taewon Entertainment produced the martial-arts movie Bichunmoo. Similar movies were subsequently made but none was very influential at the Chinese box office.

A new cooperative model was then developed: Chinese investment and South Korean technical expertise, with Chinese director Feng Xiaogang as a case in point. He used a South Korean post-production and visual effects team for his war epic The Assembly (2007) and disaster movie After Shock (2010).