Unhappy endings

IT BEGAN FEARLESS but ended with pain and a curse. How one wishes this is just meaningless wordplay based on the titles of local film productions that bookend 2006. Sadly, it is an effective summary of a distressing year for Hong Kong's film industry. There was scarcely a month when bad news didn't emerge, whether it was another underwhelming performance at the box office or a cinema shutting down.

Economic indicators might suggest a city in rude health, but filmmakers, movie distributors and cinema operators didn't enjoy a big payday.

Still, doomsayers weren't always right. The number of local productions didn't take a nosedive as expected, with 51 Hong Kong films hitting local cinemas in the past 12 months.

But that's bright side; box office takings took a gigantic tumble this year. The high hopes generated by the year's first blockbuster, January's Fearless - which made more than HK$35 million - were quickly dashed as film after film stalled well below the HK$20 million mark. The only film to beat that figure was Benny Chan Muk-shing's Rob-B-Hood, starring Jackie Chan, which made HK$23 million.

Many big-budget productions failed to live up to their hype, the most high profile being Feng Xiaogang's The Banquet, which made less money in Hong Kong than the much smaller production Men Suddenly in Black 2 when both were released in September. (Then again, Feng never saw Hong Kong as a major market for the film - which was ironic, given that the mainland- and Hong Kong-funded The Banquet is the city's official entry for best foreign film at the Academy Awards next year.)

The same went for the two most promising films expected to cash in on the Lunar New Year and summer, usually the film calendar's most profitable periods. By failing to reach even the HK$10 million mark, The Shopaholics has probably ended Wai Ka-fai's Midas touch, even though it should easily have cashed in on the festive season during the Lunar New Year.