Why China’s Lunar New Year movie market is a tale of two cities
Ironically for the Year of the Rooster, two Monkey King-themed films will fight it out for top spot in the holiday movie market, and Stephen Chow’s big-budget Journey to the West 2 may not be the shoo-in many imagine
The posters on the walls of Chinese cinemas this week could easily lead the uninitiated to think we’re celebrating the beginning – rather than the end – of the Year of the Monkey. Of the seven movies premiering on Saturday, the first day of the Year of the Rooster, the two most prominent titles are both adaptations of the legend of the Monkey King and his friends.
In one corner, there’s Stephen Chow Sing-chi’s sequel to his record-breaking 2013 film Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons. Directed by Tsui Hark and starring heartthrobs Kris Wu Yifan and Lin Gengxin, Journey to the West 2: The Demons Strike Back – produced and written by Chow and made on a mammoth budget of 440 million yuan (HK$496 million) – is expected to repeat the success of The Mermaid , the Hong Kong actor-director’s Lunar New Year blockbuster from last year.
In the other corner is Buddies in India. A comical contemporary road movie revolving around a Chinese quartet’s search for a precious document hidden somewhere in India, the film is the directorial debut of actor Wang Baoqiang. Apart from Wang himself – who plays a version of Sun Wukong, the Monkey King, in the film – Buddies feature a cast mostly known for their television work. Its production budget is reportedly on a par with Chow and Tsui’s marketing budget for Journey to the West 2 (a whopping 140 million yuan).
It may seem Journey has won the ratings war before it has begun. Common sense might dictate that audiences are most often swayed by special effects and brand recognition, two things Journey has plenty of; but Buddies in India could end up being a good example of how Chinese filmmakers work to leverage their earthy productions for bigger gains, even in the face of Goliath-like competition.
The key is to recognise that Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen are not representative of China as a whole, and that there are opportunities aplenty for those who target audiences in cities away from the country’s cosmopolitan centre.