The future of the world’s largest market / movies express the national spirit
The China Film Management Organization intends to maintain China as the world’s largest film market in the 5 year perspective of the film industry.
Theater News Base: The China Film Administration has released the 14th Five-Year Outlook Program for the country’s film industry, which aims to maintain its position as the world’s largest film market and increase the cultural influence of its projects.
Last year, China became the world’s largest box office market, overtaking North America. This was partly due to earlier pandemic control and the reopening of cinemas and the good performance of domestic films, but China does not intend to lose the title.
Until last week, China crossed the 43 billion renminbi ($ 6.7 billion) sales mark, one of the key factors being the $ 884 million sale of “Battle of Changjin Lake.”
One of China’s main plans is to become a “strong cultural power” by 2035. In this regard, the country wants to open more than 100,000 new screens by the end of the new five-year plan, 2025, and make at least 50 films with a budget of $ 15 million a year. As of March, the number of screens was 77769.
The five-year vision says the films should be “masterpieces that depict the spirit, values, power and beauty of China,” while receiving positive reviews and popularity.
In addition, home-made films should be responsible for more than 55% of the country’s total annual box office revenue. This goal seems to be achievable because domestic titles were behind 62% of total sales in 2018, and this figure reached 64% in 2019 and 84% in 2020.
The Chinese Cinema Outlook program often speaks of diversifying content, but to a large extent supports political, science-fiction, and animation works that reflect the national spirit of the country. The program states that Chinese films should try to present a “reliable, lovable and respectable image of China.”
In addition, China plans to launch a “National High-Tech Film Research Laboratory” aimed at improving the film industry through cloud computing, big data, 5G, virtual reality, augmented reality, machine learning, deep learning and blockchain.