Taiwanese producers struggles to expand beyond home market1 min read
Reading Time: < 1 minuteTaiwan was the proving ground for Tsai Ming-liang, whose films have helped make a global name for cinema from the island of roughly 23 million people.
But not every Taiwanese can be an auteur. Commercially minded producers are now struggling where the total box office take for domestically made movies was just $2 million in 2009.
Producers in the capital, Taipei, lament that most moviegoers at home are young and looking mostly for mainstream romance on the big screen or for the Hollywood blockbusters that accounted for most of the $82 million grossed by imported films last year.
Taiwan’s box office peaked in 1996, when ticket receipts totaled $104 million. Ever since, Taiwanese producers have had to push harder than normal to get their directors noticed.
