New | Huayi, Wanda in public row over star hire, threatening box office of China’s latest blockbuster
The seeds of the row were sowed in March when Huayi hired Jerry Ye Ning, general manager of Wanda Cinemas since 2008, as CEO of its movie studio
Huayi Brothers Media and Wanda Cinema Line, two of China’s largest movie production studios, have been embroiled in a war of words in the past week, in an open spat that threatens the box office receipts of the country’s latest award-winning blockbuster.
Feng Xiaogang, one of China’s largest-grossing directors from Huayi’s stable, fired the first salvo on Friday when he took to the country’s microblogs to write a missive, publicly accusing Wanda’s chairman Wang Jianlin of shutting out his latest satire I Am Not Madame Bovary (我不是潘金蓮) starring China’s best-paid actress Fan Bingbing.
The film, which opened on Friday, was alloted 40 per cent or more of the screening slots among cinemas across China. All except at Wanda, which operates Asia’s largest cinema chain, where Bovary was shown on only 10.9 per cent of screens in the country.
That’s a form of bullying, Feng wrote, in the style of a carefully crafted, satirical, classical Chinese allegory.
“Now that Wanda not only exercises the monopolistic power at home, but also is on track to take over Hollywood for the foreseeable future,” said Feng, dubbed by some as China’s home-grown version of Steven Spielberg for his ability to turn many movies into blockbusters.
Wanda is poised to become the world’s largest player in the cinema market with the acquisition of European peer Odeon & UCI Cinemas Group by its US unit AMC Entertainment by the end of the year. Wang recently boasted he planned to buy one of the “Big Six” Hollywood studios and unveiled a US$8.2 billion production facility in northeast Chinese city of Qingdao.