In China, IP is hot property, as adaptations for big and small screen promise huge returns
The intellectual property bandwagon is speeding through the Chinese film industry – and no wonder, when even those who disparage the trend are busy adapting books, graphic novels and games
At a recent film forum in Shanghai, director Feng Xiaogang slammed the latest craze among Chinese financiers of splashing out on “IP” – the shorthand for “intellectual property” and a reference to adaptation rights for books, graphic novels and games.
“Some investors said they’d got the IP for this today, and the IP for that tomorrow. But everything’s pee,” said Feng, a play on the “P” in the abbreviation, which sounds the same as “s**t” in Putonghua.
It’s hard not to agree with him, given the recent slew of bad film spin-offs of television shows. It was even reported two years ago that a Chinese web production company had registered a patent for a film called Xinhua Zidian – that is, the title of the most commonly used dictionary in the country.
Feng himself is not immune to this craze. Just two weeks before his tirade in Shanghai, the filmmaker was in Beijing to attend the press launch for The King of Blaze, a television series created from – what else? – IP, in this case You Su-lan’s popular Taiwanese manga from 1991. Representing one of the production’s financiers, Feng said the project was bound to be a success because it could cash in on the support of the source material’s fans. He reiterated that belief again a few days later, at another press conference, for the television adaptation of Chinese graphic novel Dynasty of Swords, which he will produce for video-on-demand portal iQiyi.