Yang Zi

Over the years, China's film and TV markets have been overwhelmed with period dramas and fantasies. Behind soaring box office revenues, a dearth of creativity plagues the industry. It is an agreed fact among Chinese moviegoers that domestically-made movies lack diversity and innovation.

Two producers attending the Shanghai International Film Festival said Wednesday that they only make two kinds of movies: films that can make censors happy and films that make money. Although it is reasonable for producers to respect censors and be profit-driven, this mindset has the potential to do great harm to China's film business in the long run.

Yang Zi, president of China Juli Entertainment Media Co., Ltd., said costume dramas and fantasies are the biggest gold mines among the types of films censors allow him to make. He confidently opined that they can attract filmmakers as long as they make a nice movie. However, Yang admitted he has never done any market research to date on whether moviegoers enjoy being fed the same stuff over and over again. When asked why, Yang claimed there was no company in China capable of doing thorough-enough research.

Song Guangcheng, president of Starlight International Media Group, said rehashing old stories was a money-making guarantee, citing the badly-received live action movie "Mulan" (2009) which his company produced. He argued that many recently produced modern dramas suffered big losses at the box office, adding that his company can make an in-depth movie about a historical event much more easily than a modern story.

"A plus of a costume drama like 'Mulan' is that audience knows about the story and you don't need to do much promotion or marketing. The film title itself is half of its success," Song said.

Song is now producing a movie titled "White Vengeance" about the Qin Dynasty-era warlord Xiang Yu's failed plot to trap and defeat his archrival Liu Bang more than 2,000 years ago. The movie is directed by Hong Kong's Daniel Lee, who has already made two costume drama flops, "Three Kingdoms: Resurrection of the Dragon" (2008) and "14 Blades" (2010). Song said he believes this upcoming movie will sell, especially with its well-known but plain title.

These two producers seem unwilling to leave their comfort zone. They should realize that the only reason their barely-watchable movies manage to achieve high box office ratings is due to the isolation of the mainland film market and inflated ticket prices. More importantly, they should understand that strong box office performance does not necessarily mean the audience actually likes their movies.

One could compare the current status of the Chinese film market to its real estate market – an unnaturally-inflated bubble. Tight censorship is certainly the biggest problem. But if filmmakers including producers don't try to push the envelope, how and when will improvement come? Producers' money-grabbing, narrow-minded approach is stifling a still-juvenile industry which has only started to take its first steps.