Domestic films take lead at China's 2018 box office
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E-mail CGTN, April 10, 2018
The Chinese film market has been booming in the first quarter of 2018, with the general box office currently standing at 20.2 billion yuan (3.2 billion US dollars), rising by 39.82 percent compared with last year's 14.4 billion yuan (2.28 billion US dollars), breaking several records in the process.
Domestic films have contributed 15 billion yuan (2.38 billion US dollars), accounting for 74.2 percent of the first quarter's box office, while last year, the contribution was 7.76 billion yuan (1.23 billion US dollars), accounting for 53.7 percent.
Aside from grabbing the majority of the box office in a single quarter, the first three months also saw new records for single-day, -week and -month box office as well as record breaking totals for the first day of Lunar New Year and Spring Festival.
More noticeably, the quality of the films finally became proportionate with their box office success, as most of the blockbusters were winners with the audience as well as the box office.
A total of 27 films were released in the first quarter, including 13 domestic films and 14 imported ones, and those domestic films contributed to at least 74 percent of the box office. In fact, among the top 10, seven were Chinese.
The big winner was "Operation Red Sea", an action film directed by Dante Lam, which is the followup to 2016's blockbuster "Operation Mekong." Much like that film, "Operation Red Sea" was based on the real evacuation of Chinese nationals from Yemen back in 2015 during the country's civil war. It made 3.6 billion yuan (570 million US dollars) overall.
The film wcored 8.5 out of 10 points on douban.com, China's Rotten Tomato-esque review aggregator for film, music and literature.
"Forever Young", which was produced to mark the 100th anniversary of Tsinghua University, has made over 700 million yuan (110 million US dollars) after its debut on Jan. 12. The movie, which depicts four generations of Tsinghua University students during a time span of 100 years, got 7.7 points from the audience.
Compared with their Chinese peers, the performances of the imported movies in the first quarter were not so good as expected, despite the fact that most of them have either won the industry's top awards or lead the North American box office.
Indian movie "Secret Superstar" topped the imported movies at the Chinese box office with 746 million yuan (118 million US dollars). However, it didn't achieve the success of a predecessor, "Dangal", which took 1.29 billion yuan (200 million US dollars) in 2016.
Disney's "Black Panther" barely reached 600 million yuan (95 million US dollars), and "Pacific Rim: Uprising" earned only 548 million yuan (86.8 million US dollars) and 5.8 points on douban.com, even though it starred several Chinese actors including superstar Tian Jing. Many Chinese viewers complained that the film had weak logic, bad pacing and a stereotypical plot.
The box office of the Oscar winning "The Shape of Water" barely exceeded 100 million yuan (15.8 million US dollars), and "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri", despite a 8.7-point high score on Douban, only ended up with about 60 million yuan (9.5 million US dollars).
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