Selling Chinese movies internationally

While Hollywood movies are popular commodities in China, Chinese films don't seem to have the same effects with the international audience. With the expectations of becoming the world's largest film market in the near future, Chinese film production companies are looking for ways to market their films to movie fans in Europe and North America.

With the rapid development in film technology over the last few years, China is rolling out thousands of feature films every year. But, while some of these movies have done well at the local box office, they don't seem to have the same appeal to international audiences.

Unlike Hollywood films, of which most are instant hits with moviegoers worldwide, there are only a few local films like Hero and House of Daggers that had gone international. According to Leslie Chen, a representative from American film distributor IM Global, there's a reason for this.

"Chinese movies aren't films that would appeal to everybody because they tend to be artistic rather than commercial and don't have a lot of buyers. It's not because they don't like Chinese movies but it's that they don't understand them. To people in Europe and America, Chinese culture is still very distant."

Chen's company just signed a marketing contract with Chinese production companies. She says that this will provide a platform for international buyers to learn about Chinese films and culture. Perhaps in the future, the cultural gap will be bridged.

However, according to Distribution Workshop Hong Kong CEO Jeffery Chen, the differences between Chinese and western films are too vast that filmmakers must decide from the get go where they want to distribute their product.

"We as filmmakers must ask ourselves a question, do we need to enter the international market? Because buyers and consumers from different cultural background have different taste in films, often, Chinese filmmakers will make movies targeted at the Chinese moviegoers and this is done at the expense of sacrificing the international audience."

To reach an international audience, Chen advises filmmakers to consider changing the content of their movies. He suggests that Chinese producers could make films about other countries or cultures in addition to Chinese stories.

Making Chinese movies popular to international movie fans is a long and arduous process. Hollywood films, arguably the first to become popular in cinemas across the world, did not succeed overnight. According to David Lee, president of Leeding Media which helped to produce box office hit Karate Kid, the Chinese industry could learn from Hollywood.

"They decided from the beginning that they're going to do their own distribution in the international market. In this way, they have control over their own future. In the 1920s, these American companies opened their own distribution centers in the U.K., Australia, and Germany."

The Americans learned from their success and failures. They changed the genres of their films, the actors and the storyline according to the interests and taste of the local audience. In almost a century, these production companies have culminated the knowledge of who their audience are and from where they could profit the most.

Lee says that for Chinese films to succeed both locally and internationally, there still need to be more interactions between the local filmmakers with their audience and provide the viewers with more exposure to the Chinese cinema. Today, with the advancement in technology, this has become much easier. The Internet could speed up the process of getting Chinese films to the international movie goers through websites like Amazon or distributors like Netflicks.

The Internet is not only useful in distributing films. According to Michael Liu, founder and CEO of "100TV", it can also be a tool for promotion.

"If we look at the European and American film industry, half of their returns are from the traditional cinemas. The other half is from online views of trailers or movie clips and cable networks. This practice isn't commonly seen in China."

But whether China is promoting and selling films through the Internet or via overseas offices, Jeffery Chen says it will take more than a few years for Chinese movies to become mainstream in the international market.

"It can't be done in one day or with just one movie or by just one company. There's a long journey ahead for the Chinese film industry."