Chinese audiences don't buy "comedy accounts"? French films accounted for only 0.1% of the box office in China

In 2019, only 11 of the 543 feature films released in the Chinese film market came from France, accounting for only 0.1% of the national box office. Although the Chinese market will not be able to save the French film industry in 2020 from a numerical point of view, when Hollywood is still in the crisis of the epidemic, the Chinese cinema that has reopened has become a heavy player in the global film market.

French newspaper Le Monde reported that on December 3, the 17th French film exhibition called "Panorama Film Festival" was officially launched in Beijing, and the event will last until the middle of January next year, and eight new French films will be screened in Beijing, Shanghai, Xi'an, Kunming, Sanya and other cities, most of which have been screened in France in 2019 and 2020, including the 2020 Cannes Film Festival selection "Un triomphe". At the 2020 Berlin International Film Festival, "Le sel des larmes" (Salt of Tears), "La vérité" directed by Japanese master director Hirokazu Kore-eda, "Àl'abordage", "Happy Birthday to You" (Fête de famille), "J'ai perdu mon corps", "Sibyl" and "Happy Birthday to You" (Fête de famille), "I Lost My Body" (J'ai perdu mon corps), "Sibyl" and " La Belle Epoque (Good Dreams Day Tour).

On October 8, in Taiyuan, Shanxi, people waited in a movie theater to watch a movie. (Source: China News Service)

The data of French films in China is dismal

China's film market is booming, with 1.7 billion cinema viewers and 70,000 screens. Of the 543 films released in 2019, 413 were domestically produced in China, 43 in North America, and 42 were from other parts of Asia, compared to just 11 in France. In the same year, in the Chinese film market, domestic films accounted for 64.1% of the market share, the United States accounted for 30%, and France accounted for only 0.1%.

In 2019, French films were viewed 1.1 million times in the Chinese market, which is almost negligible for the Chinese market, of which the animation "Minuscule 2" was viewed by 489,000. The situation is expected to be even worse in 2020. The Sino-French co-production "Spycies," released earlier this year, attracted 1.5 million viewers, while the French-Canadian co-production of the sci-fi disaster film "Breathe," released in October, recorded only 82,000 viewers.

"Promoting a film to theaters in Europe usually takes time and word of mouth. However, in China, the film can only last for a few days in the cinema, and the theater can change the schedule at any time. If a film is only scheduled to be screened at 10 a.m., the screening is bound to be poor. In addition, the theater audience is still very young. In China, entertainment films and films with special effects are particularly popular," explains Isabelle Glachant, head of the China office of the French Film Promotion Association (Unifrance).

French comedy films are difficult to export

Still, the film professional has reason to hope for the future: "[Chinese] audiences have different tastes for different films. A good example of this is the Lebanese film "Capernaum," which was released in China last year, which has been viewed by 12 million people, although it may be the first Arab film to be released in China. Similarly, films from Spain and the Netherlands have had good results," Grachamp analyzes.

"France mainly produces comedy films. It will be very difficult to export such films," pointed out Wang Haiyi, the distributor of imported films. However, sino-French co-production films will be difficult to change the embarrassing situation of French films in the Chinese market in the short term. What's more, Astérix et Obelix: l'Empire du Milieu, one of the Gaul heroes series directed by renowned French actor and director Guillaume Canet, was originally scheduled to be filmed in China in 2020, but the project was postponed indefinitely due to the COVID-19 crisis.