On the 6th day of its public release in Mainland China, The Myth already gathered 40 millions RMB in box office. The funding and distribution partners of the title held their celebration party at Min Quan Ju in Guangzhou; Jackie Chan, Stanley Tong and a bunch of buddies from Hong Kong all joined the party.
Box office of The Myth will soon reach a hundred millions; however, Jackie Chan did not look particularly pleased at the event of the party. It happened that he was worried about the future of Chinese movies. He pointed out that the population of South Korea is a mere 46 millions but their box office can reach a height of US$120 millions. For China, a nation with a population of 1.3 billions, the box office is not much better than that of Korea's. In the past, Korea did not have its own movie stars. The world belonged to Hong Kong celebrities. No one knows since when did our Chinese country men start to become fans of Korean celebrities.
In other words, Jackie feels pessimistic about the state of movie industry of Greater China, for both the present and the future. Therefore, even though the box office of The Myth is approaching 100 millions, Jackie cannot rejoice from the bottom of the heart. This is, in fact, the frame of mind of a leader.
The truth is, there are close to 3,000 screens in China up to the moment and a similar number of screens in Korea. This just reflects how developed the Korea movie industry is. The sad fact is, the China and Hong Kong film industry is at its very low point now. Although the number of films made for the year does not look too bad; yet, there are not many among them that can be presented to the big screen. In China, there is no observation of any eagerness to go for the big screen even in the big cities. Ticket price is astonishingly steep; its rate is as expansive as that in Hong Kong. It is, therefore, not surprising at all that 2nd and 3rd round releases in secondary cities meet little demand with such daunting price. It is pointless to mention that the actual movie going population is much smaller than the total population. It thus forces the market to go into an unfair situation where audience of secondary cities cannot enjoy first run movies simultaneously as audiences in major cities.
Further, movie culture is still very weak in today's China. People just do not have a passion for movie; not even in big cities. It is a fact that pirate culture has completely taken over the market and the film industry defeated. The root of this is not only on market liberation, the creative or production of films but the very origin of an unrealistic ticket price tag. Even a retired professor dares not enter the cinema and common audiences just regard watching movie in the theatre as an extravagant mode of spending. The reason for lacking behind box office performance is apparently simple. The dear ticket price halts people from entering the cinema. In another sense, the huge market is just right in our face but it is indeed an embarrassing market.
Well, it looks like that Jackie Chan does have a reason for getting upset. Audiences residing in remote middle and small cities cannot catch his latest movie. They will have to wait till the end of the year or even next year in order to see The Myth!
(hkfilmart October 10, 2005)
