The biggest films are.....Chinese.

Harry Palmr

Was just looking through the box office mojo list for top film of 2018 and the Chinese domestic market is going buffo - Monster Hunt 2, Detective Chinatown 2, Operation Red Sea are three of the top 5 in the world despite the films hardly being seen outside China. If they work out how to make their biggest films exportable (and they will) the worlds their oyster.

2017 top 10

1 Wolf Warrior 2 n/a $854,248,869 7/27
2 The Fate of the Furious UPI $392,807,017 4/14
3 Never Say Die n/a $333,937,573 9/30
4 The Ex-File: The Return of the Exes n/a $306,449,457 12/29
5 Kung Fu Yoga n/a $254,531,595 1/28
6 Journey to the West: The Demons Strike Back n/a $239,553,888 1/28
7 Transformers: The Last Knight PPI $228,842,508 6/23
8 Youth (2017) n/a $224,558,496 12/15
9 Dangal n/a $193,050,870 5/5
10 Coco Disney $189,226,296 11/24

8 out of 10 titles, they are adding 22 new screens a day, I'm going to predict that in 10 years Chinese studios will own all the big Hollywood studios and distributors as they'll be able to make the Japanese conglomerates offers they can't refuse.

Cinema is doomed, it really is. I think your right on the money in your prediction.

Combine those stats with the fact that best picture was won by an Aquaman being seduced by boiled eggs instead of a flawlessly directed, scripted and acted masterpiece, and the creeping in of critical acclaim for films like Wonder Woman which in past times would have been instantly dismissed for the teen fodder that it is. Unless James Cameron can plunge to new depths in whatever his latest contraption is to find and raise the bar, perch it at a level that it can't be dislodged by CGI shamans and start a new movement in free thinking popular film, most of the 'best' films in 20 years time are going to be leave your brain in the car park vehicles.

garra

Many predicted the end of music with torrent downloads and little money going to the artists. Now we have Spotify directing you to cover versions of your favorite toons and electronic auto-tuned R&B topping the charts, with very little output of a genuinely indie/alternative/ground-breaking nature (imo of course). This approach is a precursor for the management of cinema / TV production into the future and already in place with Netflix's fine-tuned formula for content generation.
As for Harrys OP point about Chinese cinema making their output portable, I don't think it will go that way due to the cultural differences involved - in the same fashion as no amount of exposure to oriental cuisine could convince me to eat dogs or cats etc. Although am sure globalisation will have the final say unfortunately, for generations after us.

garra

garra wrote: »

Many predicted the end of music with torrent downloads and little money going to the artists. Now we have Spotify directing you to cover versions of your favorite toons and electronic auto-tuned R&B topping the charts, with very little output of a genuinely indie/alternative/ground-breaking nature (imo of course). This approach is a precursor for the management of cinema / TV production into the future and already in place with Netflix's fine-tuned formula for content generation.
As for Harrys OP point about Chinese cinema making their output portable, I don't think it will go that way due to the cultural differences involved - in the same fashion as no amount of exposure to oriental cuisine could convince me to eat dogs or cats etc. Although am sure globalisation will have the final say unfortunately, for generations after us.

Netflix though is mainstream and producing a lot of high quality content. I don't see anything in that vein in the music industry. Netflix is popular culture for TV shows and theres a long list of outstanding productions from even the most refined perspectives. I think its a great thing for the art of film making which is blurring now into the art of tv show making. I don't have an issue with that at all. It's cinema that I see dying with the direction of things.

pixelburp

I don't think those stats really factor in the reality of cinema in the Western hemisphere, and having to effectively compete with TV - and streaming services too. I'm not going to pretend to be an expert in Chinese media consumption, but it's no secret that in this part of the world, cinemas, box-office tallies etc. are shrinking; of course I can't put my hands on the stats after googling, but of what I recall from reading, the blockbuster season saw an 8% drop in earnings during 2017 - the lowest in 20+ years.

Streaming services are king at the moment, and have completely reshaped the path in viewing entertainment; indeed, the pull of TV series has never been stronger for legitimate creatives, coupled with an overall increased ability to watch the cinematic at home. It's not without reason that the big talking points in TV are also shows that are its most cinematic in scope or vision (stuff like Handmaid's Tale, Game of Thrones, or even more offbeat material such as the psychedelic Legon).

It doesn't feel like a stretch either to speculate that in China, cinema & the box-office are still powerful entities in the Entertainment Industry, and would account for the more impressive, stronger numbers in those films. There are 1.379 billion people in China - that's ALWAYS going to skew figures and simply has to be a factor in review the years big box-office hits - and it's an extremely closed market, culturally speaking.

Harry Palmr

The American summer season was a bust in 2017, I think people just had enough of crappy films. Stuff like The Mummy and Transformers: Last Knight tested everyone's patience The UK market while much smaller obviously was up in the same period as the variety of films watched by many was broader.

pixelburp

Harry Palmr wrote: »

The American summer season was a bust in 2017, I think people just had enough of crappy films. Stuff like The Mummy and Transformers: Last Knight tested everyone's patience The UK market while much smaller obviously was up in the same period as the variety of films watched by many was broader.

I don't think audiences have suddenly picked up their standards - the Transformers sequel still featured in your own list after all, the very first English language film at that, so people are still watching drek in their droves.

As to stuff like the The Mummy, that to me is more symptomatic of the current trend with Hollywood studios trying to forcefully create the mythical 'shared universe' that DC & Marvel are enjoying - without putting in the graft first; retrofitting an old horror icon from the 1930s into a Tom Cruise action vehicle was always a hugely risky move, and the bold announcements about Universal's so-called 'Dark Universe' was just hubris in motion. It was always doomed to fail.

Regardless, the 'cinema experience' simply isn't as enticing as it once was, not in a part of the world where 50+ inch HD TVs are approaching the norm, coupled with on-demand services that allow you to watch the bigger Hollywood material only a few months after its cinematic run.

Though...

All that said... where did you get your figures, cos I'm looking at:
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/yearly/chart/?view2=worldwide&yr=2017&p=.htm

And unless I've pulled out the wrong info, that looks to me more as I'd expect: the Last Jedi being the top grossing worldwide film from 2017, with a slew of Hollywood blockbusters propping up the top 10.

S.M.B.

pixelburp wrote: »

Though...

All that said... where did you get your figures, cos I'm looking at:
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/yearly/chart/?view2=worldwide&yr=2017&p=.htm

And unless I've pulled out the wrong info, that looks to me more as I'd expect: the Last Jedi being the top grossing worldwide film from 2017, with a slew of Hollywood blockbusters propping up the top 10.

Those initial figures are the top grossing films in China and not the top grossing films worldwide. I am not sure if when the OP talks about 2018 whether he is talking about the same thing.

It's not very clear.

pixelburp

Ah right, yeah, reading the OP again it's focused on the domestic Chinese market; the title of the thread made it seem like it was worldwide.

TBH, looking at my own link, Wolf Warrior 2 is the only non Hollywood film in the top 10; in fact you have to go way down to number 26 before you get to the next non-US production (Your Name). After that, it's The Great Wall at 29, that weird Chinese fantasy film starring Matt Damon. Looks like there are four Chinese films in the top 40.

On a related note, anyone curious should definitely check out the trailer for Wolf Warrior 2 - you'll never complain about blunt American jingoism in Hollywood again. It's so rampantly pro-China, it makes Michael Bay look positively restrained in comparison. It also appears to co-star Frank Grillo as a hilariously OTT American villain.

Harry Palmr

As I said in the OP

If they work out how to make their biggest films exportable (and they will) the worlds their oyster

Which is not a happy thought, then again most American blockbusters are appalling as well.

S.M.B.

Finally wrapping my head around these stats now.

3 of the top 5 worldwide grossing movies of 2018 are Chinese.

8 out of the top 10 grossing movies of 2017 in China were Chinese (although this is the exact same % as 5 years ago so not much of a trend change).

Wolf Warrior 2 was the only Chinese film from 2017 to break the worldwide top 10.

I think everyone is spot on when saying the obvious trend here is that more Chinese people are watching movies at the cinema compared to those in the big traditional markets like the US. Also, Chinese people will continue to watch Chinese movies if they have the choice.

I don't foresee them making their movies exportable in an attempt to take over the world but if western cinema going trends put serious pressure on the Hollywood blockbuster machine then the Chinese would be in prime position to fill that gap.

Sad Professor

I can count on one hand how many films from mainland China I've seen, most of them from the same director. There's a reason for that. They have no rating system. The government approves everything and there's a lot of censorship. Western audiences aren't interested in watching movies about Confucius or thinly veiled propaganda films about Chinese peasants throwing themselves at monsters, even if they star Matt Damon or Christian Bale. With the way things are going politically there, I don't see that changing any time soon.

Chinese culture isn't exportable in the way that American culture is. Nor do they want it to be. China is only starting to stretch its soft power legs and is mainly concerned with overcoming negative western perceptions of China or controlling its diaspora. They won't do this by exporting their own films but by buying up western studios (Wanda Group etc) or getting Hollywood to water down its own films for it. Hollywood has been pandering to the Chinese market for years already, but there are limits to that.