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Vivienne Chow

Industry hopeful of turnaround as 3 local productions make the top 10

Summer temperatures haven't yet been high  enough to drive people into the cool refuge of cinemas.

Attendance figures for the first half of the season  show a small drop from last year, but the industry remains optimistic.

The top draw  is local blockbuster Initial D, taking  $37.8 million since it opened on June 23. The road-racing film,  directed by Infernal Affairs' Andrew Lau Wai-keung and Alan Mak Siu-fai, is the year's best-selling movie. It will be screened at the Venice Film Festival and opens in Japan next month.

The top 10 summer films include six Hollywood giants. Stephen Spielberg's  War of The Worlds is in second place, while Mr and Mrs Smith, starring Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, is third.

Two local comedies, Dragon Reloaded 2 and Kung Fu Mahjong, also are among the top 10.

A Japanese film, All About My Dog, that has been dubbed in Cantonese,  is at number 10.

The total box office between June 1 and July 31 fell by 0.4 per cent compared with the same period last year.

Tsui Hark's martial arts epic Seven Swords, which will open the Venice Film Festival, has taken $4.2 million since it opened in local cinemas last Friday.

John Chong Ching, executive director of Media Asia Entertainment Group, which released Initial D, admitted that audiences had become more demanding.

He said that while local people still preferred watching quality Hong Kong films, those  heavily loaded with local elements had  limited success. 'People will compare your production with overseas productions. Hong Kong audiences don't like movies that are too local.

'But films pretending to be Hollywood productions are even worse. The old formula of simply feeding the audience what it wants is not good enough.'

Woody Tsung Wan-chi, chief executive of Hong Kong, Kowloon and New Territories Motion Picture Industry Association, said 50 to 60 films will be produced this year.

While receipts were unlikely to reach the $400 million levels of summer box-office takes in the early 1990s, Mr Tsung said this summer was still likely to end up with a satisfactory result.

'It's a tough time. With the threat from BT [BitTorrent, one of the technologies used to download movies illegally]  the figure isn't so bad,' said Mr Tsung.

'We are still planning to take legal action against movie downloading but further details are to be confirmed,' he said.

Charles Heung Wah-keung, chairman of China Star Entertainment, said the summer box office was better than expected, with Initial D and Dragon Reloaded 2, but studios were cautious.



Initial D leads in lacklustre war of the box office world