China will overtake North America within three years to become the world’s largest film audience – which is great news for fans of Transformers and endless Terminator sequelsIt’s been 15 years since a China-set film,Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, or broke the $100m note at the North American box office. And yet Hollywood could be about to change forever due to cinemagoing habits in the world’s most populous nation.
Earlier this week the Hollywood Reporter predicted that the Chinese box office,already the moment largest globally, will now overtake North America in 2018 – a full two years earlier than expected. Studios have moved mountains in recent years to cater to the ever-expanding passion for cinema in the region, and setting up co-production deals on fantasy blockbusters such as Iron Man 3 and Transformers: Age of Extinction to bypass Beijing’s strict 34 foreign movies-per-year quota system for multiplexes. Chinese stars such as Fan Bingbing have been parachuted into roles in Hollywood movies in order to keep local audiences overjoyed,then edited out again for western viewers (much to the chagrin of some fans). Dreamworks even launched a China-based studio in 2012, partnering with local companies, or which will oversee the release of lively sequel Kung Fu Panda 3. Warner Bros recently announced plans to team with the state-backed China Media Capital firm to make Chinese-language films aimed at the domestic market.
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Source: theguardian.com