Xinhua Insight: Chinese cinemas enjoy year of foreign, domestic hits

Sci-fi thriller "The Martian" is the latest U.S. movie to win success in China partly by including crowd-pleasing elements for locals.

Hollywood has been setting scenes in the Middle Kingdom since 2006, when Tom Cruise did a bungee jump from the Shanghai Bank of China Tower in "Mission: Impossible III," but the moneymaking potential in the booming Chinese film market is encouraging Western filmmakers to portray China in a more and more flattering light.

Echoing the plot of 2013 hit "Gravity," "The Martian" sees the Chinese space agency play a key role in helping get Matt Damon home from Mars.

Hollywood's change in tack is hard to untangle from another year of staggering box office data in China. A record 40 billion yuan's (6.3 billion U.S. dollars) worth of tickets have been sold by cinemas in the world's second-largest film market in 2015.

It seems only a matter of time before it becomes the world's largest, overtaking annual cinema ticket sales of around 10 billion U.S. dollars in North America.

China's film market has posted an average growth of 30 percent year on year since 2003, when authorities doubled the number of foreign films cinemas could show to 20 and allowed foreign enterprises to invest in Chinese cinema chains.

According to official figures, box office sales stood at just 1 billion yuan in that first year, buy they are expected to reach 100 billion by 2020.

There are now about 31,000 screens in more than 6,200 cinemas nationwide, compared with 2,000 and 1,000 respectively 12 years ago.

While it has allowed more foreign films to be shown, the government is keen for homegrown movies to not be drowned out.

Chinese films account for nearly 60 percent of this year's ticket sales despite fierce competition from the likes of "Mission: Impossible -- Rogue Nation" and James Bond outing "Spectre."

In September, with sales exceeding 2.429 billion yuan, China-made live-action animation "Monster Hunt" surpassed "Furious 7" to become the the highest-grossing film in Chinese movie history.

Other domestic blockbusters including 3D animation "Monkey King: Hero is Back" and 3D action-thriller "Chronicles of the Ghostly Tribe" have also won applause for their visual effects.

They have created confidence in the progress of the Chinese film industry, although insiders admit that it still lags behind Hollywood in both production standards and marketing.

Perhaps the answer is to blood more young talent from outside of the establishment. This year has seen a number of successes from inexperienced directors.

Comedy "Jian Bing Man," the first work of TV host-turned-director Dong Chengpeng, and romance "Tiny Times 4," by writer Guo Jingming, have reaped billions of yuan, outperforming films by some industry stalwarts.

"Films by iconic Chinese figures Chen Kaige and John Woo are still of high quality, but they might not fit the taste of the younger generation," said Rao Shuguang, secretary of the China Film Association.

Cinema ticket sales website Maoyan.com found 57 percent of its users this year were born after 1990.

"The generational shift in China's film industry has been completed this year, as the market has been taken over by young people and older directors have failed to impress audiences," said Zhang Yiwu, a film professor at Peking University.

Most younger people go to cinemas for entertainment and social purposes while paying less attention to films as a form of art, said Rao, adding that the change means more opportunities for "layman" directors who have won fans in other fields.

It is not just blockbusters, but art-house gems, that are benefitting from the expanding market.

In 2006, Golden Lion winner "Still Life" by Jia Zhangke only took 3 million yuan at the box office in China. Nine years later, Chinese cinema-goers have handed over 30 million yuan to see Jia's latest work, "Mountains May Depart."

With ticket prices remaining stable in the past decade, the figures indicate the audience for Jia's films has increased nearly eight-fold.

It's a pleasant picture for film directors and fans -- and there's more to come, with senior officials bidding to attract fresh investment. In late October, they had a first reading of a draft law promising anti-piracy measures and tax perks for filmmaking. Endi