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As comedy-drama Hi, Mom raked in more than 5.04 billion yuan ($776 million) and became second highest-grossing Chinese film ever on Saturday, a Chinese political advisor shared her concerns about a potential theater chain monopoly.
This year's Spring Festival film season, one of the most lucrative periods of the year for China's entertainment business, broke all previous records with a combined taking of 7.82 billion yuan. Most of those earnings came from two movie juggernauts, Chen Sicheng's Detective Chinatown 3 and Jia Ling's Hi, Mom, which both grossed over 4 billion yuan each. The other five films' release during the season made below 1 billion yuan or less each.
Some of the filmmakers even took to social media to beg theater chains to arrange more showing time slots for their films, as well as beg audiences to watch their films, a move which sparked wide discussion online.
Yan Huiying, a member of both the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) and the Central Committee of the Jiusan Society, said that given many theater chains are either owned by big Chinese film studios or are actively involved in film distribution and production, they often give priority to screening movies that they had a hand in. Therefore, other films without solid backing by dominant film giants have reduced chances of succeeding.
The cinema chains use their dominant position to participate in film production and distribution, and the producers are willing to join forces with them, which will create suspicion of monopoly, Yan said.
During her proposal to this year's annual session of China's top political advisory body, the political advisor therefore suggested that film production and distribution should be separated from movie theater chains, while relevant departments should formulate industry rules to avoid or limit the monopolistic development of movie theaters. By doing this, Yan hopes that a fair environment can be fostered in the film market.
In addition, she suggested forbidding movie theater chains to collude with distributors to make exclusive film showtime arrangements, and setting an upper limit for a film's market share in terms of screening time slots.
We also have to crack down on corrupted behavior to use money to buy fake box office figures, Yan added.
To do so, she suggested that film distributors and cinema chains should conduct film scheduling negotiations before a film's release to prevent cinema chains from making their decisions alone.
(中国网英文)
