Hollywood loses its luster, the world's largest box office market marks the beginning of the globalization journey of Chinese films

China's cinemas only reopened at the end of July, but it was precisely because of the strict control that Chinese films began to gain momentum in the second half of 2020 compared to the slowly recovering global film market.

According to CICC data, two months after the theaters resumed operations, the box office of the Chinese film market has recovered by 43.2% year-on-year, and the national theater resumption rate has now exceeded 92%. If nothing unexpected happens, the box office of the National Day in 2020 is expected to recover to 110% of the same period last year.

In contrast, due to poor control of the epidemic in the American film market, the national theater resumption rate is only 68%. Major box office cities such as Los Angeles, New York, and San Francisco seem to have a long way to go before large-scale resumption of work.

Based on this, industry experts unanimously believe that the overall box office of the Chinese film market in 2020 is likely to surpass that of the US market and become the world's largest box office market.

The rise of the Chinese film market is in sharp contrast to the decline of the American film market. However, even if the epidemic factor is removed, judging from the trend of the entire market, under the torrent of China's cultural confidence, the influence of "Hollywood" has faded by half. In the historical box office rankings of Chinese films, nine of the top ten films were made in China, and only one was from Hollywood. At a time when the quota for American films has never been reduced, this data can better illustrate the problem - it has become an ironclad fact that Chinese audiences love Chinese films more.

The days of being suppressed by "Hollywood"

Unlike the market in 2020, a decade ago, most of the Chinese film market was swallowed up by "Hollywood". Taking the top ten box office rankings of mainland movies in 2012 as an example, there were only three domestic films: "Painted Skin 2", "Lost in Thailand" and "Chinese Zodiac", and the other 70% of the market share was occupied by "Hollywood".

The main reason for this is that Hollywood movies are indeed attractive enough. In other words, Chinese local movies at that time were indeed not good to watch.

From the perspective of cost and industrial system, since they are facing the global market, leading Hollywood films can often invest large sums of money and rely on the industrial system accumulated over the years to create highly competitive films.

For example, Avatar, which won the Chinese box office championship in 2010, had a total cost of $237 million. The film was produced by the world's top special effects companies such as Weta Digital and Industrial Light & Magic, and each frame took an average of 40,000 hours of labor.

On the other hand, since Hollywood places great emphasis on "long-termism", once a film has a global impact, a sequel will be immediately put on the agenda, and the market will also widely accept these films, such as the Marvel series that has dominated the world for twenty years.

In 2012, a large portion of the top ten Chinese box office movies were sequels, such as Mission: Impossible 4: Ghost Protocol, which ranked fifth, Men in Black 3, Ice Age 4, and Journey 2: The Mysterious Island, which ranked eighth, ninth, and tenth respectively.

Cultural confidence in Chinese films

The year 2012 was a watershed. When the Chinese film market was dominated by Hollywood, a hilarious comedy "Lost in Thailand" broke through the siege and became the starting point for the explosion of the Chinese film market.

From a market perspective, Lost in Thailand has two highlights. First, it topped the list of mainland movie box office in 2012. Second, the total box office reached 1.267 billion, making it the first movie in Chinese movie history to exceed 1 billion box office.

Industry experts therefore unanimously believe that the 2012 "Lost in Thailand" was the beginning of Chinese films competing with "Hollywood" and launching a counterattack.

There are two main reasons why the market began to show a favorable trend for Chinese films in 2012:

1. The number of screens is expanding, and cinemas are expanding to fourth- and fifth-tier cities, allowing local culture to flexibly cater to the mainstream trends of the market.

Industry data shows that there were only 13,118 screens in China in 2012, but by 2018, the number had reached 60,079. It was also from 2018 that the number of screens in China surpassed that of the US market, becoming the single film market with the most movie screens in the world.

As the number of screens expands, Chinese film practitioners see the advantages of "Lost in Thailand" over Hollywood movies in terms of local culture, and therefore begin to create films that are more suitable for the local area. Wang Zhangshun, deputy general manager of Donghai Rising Sun Pictures, said in an interview earlier: "Local culture is more easily accepted in China. Domestic films have diverse content and themes, and are both creative and of high quality, not inferior to imported blockbusters."

In 2017, the total number of viewers of "Wolf Warrior 2" exceeded 140 million, and the box office reached an unprecedented 5.639 billion.

In contrast to the rise of China's local film market, since Hollywood is targeting the global market and has huge investments, it is difficult to flexibly create content with profound local cultural connotations for different markets. Over time, an inevitable result has emerged: Hollywood movies and Chinese audiences are drifting further and further apart.

Take the Men in Black series as an example. The 2012 "Men in Black 3" had already been declared finished, but in order to make another wave of money, Hollywood released the sequel "Men in Black 4" in 2019. As a result, it only earned 300 million yuan in box office in the Chinese market, and did not even make it into the top 40 of China's box office rankings that year.

It is precisely because of this that, as of September 2020, among the top ten Chinese movie box office rankings, only one Hollywood movie, Avengers: Endgame, which is a sequel, is included, and the rest are all domestic films. This is undoubtedly a concrete victory for China's cultural confidence.

The globalization journey of Chinese films has just begun

In 2020, the Chinese film market has completed a Jedi counterattack against "Hollywood", turning the latter into a docile "Hollywood cat", but it cannot be ignored that this is only for the Chinese market.

Take "Tenet" for example. Although it lost in the direct competition with "The Eight Hundred" in the Chinese market, it still achieved good results thanks to its global box office. Industry data shows that after ten days of release, the box office of "Tenet" in the mainland was only 50.8 million US dollars, but the global box office reached 207 million US dollars.

This is similar to "Avatar", which led the global film market into the 3D era and ranked second in the global box office. Data shows that the global box office of "Avatar" reached 1.33 billion US dollars, of which 2/3 came from overseas markets.

In contrast, Chinese films do not have the same appeal as Hollywood films in overseas markets. For example, Wolf Warriors 2, the Chinese box office champion mentioned above, only earned $210,000 in North America.

When Wolf Warriors 2 was released in the US market, it was criticized by American audiences for being "too unrealistic", "the US military is more like this", "how can there be someone who is invincible?"...

In response to these questions, Wu Jing, the director and lead actor of Wolf Warrior 2, asked: In James Bond, one man takes on the armed forces of a country; in Fast and Furious, a few cars can destroy a nuclear base; in First Blood, the protagonist escapes unscathed every time. Aren’t all the popular American blockbusters like this?

Ultimately, due to national strength and first-mover advantage, most markets currently have a natural affinity for Hollywood movies, so when they first see "non-American" content, they are bound to feel resistance.

However, it cannot be ignored that even though Hollywood movies have formed cultural hegemony in the global market, they first dominate the local market and then achieve cultural output. Following this logic, we can find that the current development path of Chinese movies is generally similar to that of Hollywood movies.

For Chinese films, 2020 is not only a year of strong rise of local forces. More importantly, due to the impact of the epidemic, the global film market is in a period of transition, which also has a strong guiding advantage for the cultural output of Chinese films.

From the market perspective, Chinese films have also begun to go overseas in the past two years, and have gained good reputation and box office. For example, the total overseas box office of "The Wandering Earth" is 4500 RMB, with an IMDB score of 8.0 and 40% of the audience giving it a score of 10. The recently popular "Eight Hundred" also received an 86% freshness rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The well-known film media Variety commented: "Eight Hundred allows the audience to immerse themselves in both the cruel battlefield and the shocking historical picture."

It is foreseeable that with the gradual maturity of China's film industry system and the precise grasp of the market and subject matter, Chinese films are likely to usher in their own golden age of globalization.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.