The surprise hit in Chinese theaters last year was a low-budget, wacky road-trip comedy that even beat out global blockbuster “Avatar” to become the country’s highest-grossing film ever. But “Lost in Thailand” found just a paltry $57,000 during its U.S. theatrical release.
The film that earned 1.26 billion yuan ($200 million) in China joins other homegrown hits that have flopped internationally, and is the latest sign that while the country has become a box-office superpower, it faces a harder task fulfilling its leaders’ hopes that its studios will be able to rival Hollywood for global influence.
Action-comedy “Let the Bullets Fly,” starring Chow Yun-fat, grossed $111 million at home but $63,000 in the United States, while action-fantasy “Painted Skin: The Resurrection,” starring Donnie Yen, earned $113 million domestically but $50,400 in the U.S., according to Hollywood.com.
Chinese movies’ overseas box office receipts fell 48 percent last year, alarming regulators, who also worried about Hollywood movies taking more than half of ticket revenue, which totaled 17 billion yuan ($2.7 billion), for the first time in nine years. Tong Gang, head of the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, urged filmmakers to “better express Chinese images and stories in line with the international film mainstream” and step up their marketing and publicity, according to state media.
China’s film industry has been reaching out to Hollywood in search of co-production deals that would help studios make movies that both Chinese and global audiences like. They’re hoping to make the next “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” a 2000 U.S.-China-Hong Kong-Taiwan co-production that became a global blockbuster.
But film distributors say selling China’s movies to the world is hampered by subject matter that doesn’t travel well, different storytelling methods and the sheer size of its own market.
Lim Teck, managing director of Singaporean producer and distributor Clover Films, said China has become so lucrative local studios don’t need to think about other markets.
“China has become so big and so powerful. Basically a lot of movies nowadays are very China-centric,” Lim said at a panel discussion at the Hong Kong International Film and TV Market, a major trade show.
“They’re produced primarily for the China local market, which is nothing wrong because the market is so big, but with that in mind it sort of undermines the (appeal to the) rest of Asia,” Lim said.
Doris Pfardrescher, president of distributor Well Go USA, said the kinds of movies that are popular in China today — romances, comedies and fantasy flicks — don’t necessarily appeal to audiences in other countries.
“For the U.S. market, what primarily does well are your martial arts action films. … Usually they have simplified stories. It’s all about visual effect. They’re just easier to consume as far as with the fanboys,” she said, adding that China is making fewer and fewer such movies.
“The films that are being made now, the Chinese films, are these romantic comedies that just don’t do well for us.”
“Lost in Thailand” follows two businessmen who encounter a tourist while searching for their boss. While it has been applauded for depicting modern middle-class life in China, critics say its humor doesn’t appeal outside China.
In an interview, director Xu Zheng said, “I didn’t even think of the foreign market when I was making the film, because the budget was limited.” Had he known it would have been released in other countries, “I might have changed some things in my script.”
China’s censorship system has also been blamed for limiting the kinds of films made, as filmmakers stay away from edgy subjects like in contemporary thrillers in favor of safer storylines.
Film distributors said there are also subtle differences in storytelling, especially with historical and cultural touchstones that differ among audiences.
“There are a lot of things you need to explain and tell to the Western audience (that) would be considered boring” to a Chinese audience, said Jeffrey Chan, CEO of Hong Kong-based Distribution Workshop.
Action movies aside, “you need social, historical, cultural background. Then the way you tell it to a Chinese audience and the way you tell it to a non-Chinese audience will be very different,” Chan said.
Pfardrescher added that for “a lot of Chinese films that I see there is this assumption that Americans know maybe the history or the political humor or something, but unfortunately we don’t. We don’t understand. We don’t know. So it doesn’t translate.
“The only way to do that is to make a lot longer movie to explain it all, but it would be very boring for Chinese audiences.”
AI-Assisted Works Can Get Copyright With Enough Human Creativity, According To U.S. Copyright Office
Artists can copyright works they made with the help of artificial intelligence, according to a new report by the U.S. Copyright Office that could further clear the way for the use of AI tools in Hollywood, the music industry and other creative fields.
The nation's copyright office, which sits in the Library of Congress and is not part of the executive branch, receives about half a million copyright applications per year covering millions of individual works. It has increasingly been asked to register works that are AI-generated.
And while many of those decisions are made on a case-by-case basis, the report issued Wednesday clarifies the office's approach as one based on what the top U.S. copyright official describes as the "centrality of human creativity" in authoring a work that warrants copyright protections.
"Where that creativity is expressed through the use of AI systems, it continues to enjoy protection," said a statement from Register of Copyrights Shira Perlmutter, who directs the office.
An AI-assisted work could be copyrightable if an artist's handiwork is perceptible. A human adapting an AI-generated output with "creative arrangements or modifications" could also make it fall under copyright protections.
The report follows a review that began in 2023 and fielded opinions from thousands of people that ranged from AI developers, to actors and country singers.
It shows the copyright office will continue to reject copyright claims for fully machine-generated content. A person simply prompting a chatbot or AI image generator to produce a work doesn't give that person the ability to copyright that work, according to the report. "Extending protection to material whose expressive elements are determined by a machine ...... Read More