China may restrict most foreign films from showing in its theaters, but the country's film industry would nonetheless like to lure some overseas business.
To that end, a Chinese government venture is in the process of constructing China's first digital film center, offering extensive digital pre-production, production and post-production services in the city of Wuxi, 45 minutes from Shanghai by bullet train.
The Wuxi Studio Development and Promotion Committee has also named film producer and former Academy president Sid Ganis honorary chairperson of the committee, enlisting his aid in bringing foreign business to a country with a booming economy but strict limits on the number of non-Chinese films that can be exhibited each year.
China places a 20-titles-per-year limit on foreign films, which nonetheless account for nearly half of its box-office revenues. (About 500 Chinese films are released each year.) The World Trade Organization has demanded that the country relax its quota, though the Chinese government has yet to respond.
Box-office receipts in China reached about $1.5 billion last year, more than six times larger than they were five years earlier. "Avatar" made close to $200 million, almost double the take for the highest-grossing Chinese film ever.
"Business is huge in China these days, but not for most foreign films yet," said Ganis, who first came to the country as part as an international initiative he started when he was president of the Academy. "Right now they still have their quota, but that quota is going to become easier to take."
The quota is only one issue that Ganis is dealing with as the American face of a country often seen as hostile to foreign interests, with a troubling human rights record and a casual attitude toward copyright that appears to tolerate rampant piracy.
"Those things are always on my mind, particularly the copyright issue," Ganis admitted to TheWrap. "The impression I get is that they're in the mood to conform with the rest of the world on copyright. They haven't done it yet, but they're in the mood, and I sincerely believe they will."
The Wuxi center, which is expected to start the first phase of its operations in early 2012, is being built in an old steel mill that will be converted into six soundstages and an array of post-production facilities. It will house companies offering visual effects, animation, cloud computing, research and development and training for Chinese workers.
"They will have plenty of business with the Chinese film industry, but they also have a lot to offer to international filmmakers," said Ganis. "They'd very much like productions coming in, they'd like to co-produce, and they'd like companies to send them part of the post work for productions."
Ganis insisted that the obstacles caused by China's foreign-film quota and copyright policies will be surmounted – because, he said, the upside is simply too valuable.
"The whole issue of cinema has been very important in exporting China to the rest of the world," he said, "and importing the rest of the world to China."
(Photo by AMPAS)
