Chinese, International Producers Beat Path to Co-Productions1 min read
Reading Time: < 1 minuteProducers and movie industry advocates visiting the Beijing International Film Festival’s first full day on Sunday from around the world joined their Chinese counterparts in a summit to slice and dice the potential perks and pitfalls of making movies together.
Co-productions can save foreign producers money and increase their chances of distribution in China’s tightly controlled but booming market, where gross ticket sales rose 64% to $1.5 billion in 2010 despite a 20-title cap on the Hollywood films that out-gross locals films two-to-one.
And Chinese companies stand to benefit from co-productions, too, at a time when the central government is encouraging local producers to hone their skills by working with foreign experts — thus helping to boost China’s soft power around the world.
Zhou Tiedong, president of the summit-organizing China Film Promotion International, said 48 of the 49 Chinese films that had some recent export success, were made with foreign participation: “This shows the promising future of co-productions,” Zhou said.
