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Imported movies drive film market

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Domestic movies did not fare well in the first half of the year, but imported blockbusters helped drive the entire market, according to China’s film authority.

Box office sales in China in the first six months of the year reached 8.07 billion yuan ($1.28 billion), a 41.7 percent annual increase, according to data from the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television released on Thursday.

Ticket sales for imported movies increased by 90.4 percent to 5.27 billion yuan, while sales for domestic films dropped by 4.3 percent to 2.8 billion yuan, according to the administration.

Film ticket sales totaled 10.17 billion yuan in 2010 and more than12 billion yuan last year.

"Despite the expanding size of the film market in China, the market share of Chinese films is shrinking," said Gao Jun, general manager of Beijing Shengshi Huarui Film Investment & Management Co and a former deputy general manager of the theater operator New Film Association.

With box office sales of 216 million yuan by the end of June, the fantasy epic Painted Skin: The Resurrection was the biggest domestic film in the first half of the year.

The movie is still being shown and had grossed 516.6 million yuan as of July 8. It is still far from the 934.03 million yuan grossed by Titanic 3D, the most popular foreign movie in China in the first six months of the year.

The poor performance of the domestic film industry is because of the low quality of Chinese movies, when competing with foreign blockbusters, according to experts.