The flat performance of 2016 has also been attributed to a shortage of runaway hits. Except for the pre-crackdown box-office record of The Mermaid, which stands at 3.39 billion yuan, other blockbusters were all in the range of 1 billion to 1.5 billion yuan. Of these, only Zootopia (1.5 billion yuan), an import, and Operation Mekong (1.18 billion yuan) relied on word of mouth to propel sales above the 1 billion yuan mark. Others were all products of franchises.
However, not every star-studded epic built around a wildly popular book or story ended up in that league. Many fell flat on the market, due to growing sophistication of moviegoers. The failure of the erstwhile winning formula with L.O.R.D (Legend of Ravaging Dynasties), at 382 million yuan, and League of Gods, at 284 million, offered a cautionary tale for new players who come to the industry with loads of money but little knowledge.
The financial game of minimum guarantee also failed spectacularly in 2016. Both League of Gods and Ip Man 3 were guaranteed a minimum box office return of 1 billion yuan, for example, but fell far short.
"We may have more screens and a bigger market, but we also have more movies that are dumbed down and brainless. But audiences are going through a change. They are less willing to buy tickets to movies with only visual spectacles and all-star casts," said Liu Zhenyuan, a screenwriter whose novel I Am Not Madame Bovary spawned an award-winning comedy that raked in 483 million yuan at the box office.
The year 2016 could also be a turning point for the perceived clout of the pop idol pretty boys. Many projects built around them, usually romances, had only middling performances at the market, and their average box office returns were noticeably lower than similar genres from previous years.
Some of these pop idols had such bad attitudes in the workplace－shooting only close-ups and leaving the rest for body doubles, for example－that Jackie Chan, a titan of the industry legendary for his work ethics, threatened to "out" them.
Quality films enjoyed a modest revival last year. The biggest event was the performance of Song of the Phoenix, a little film directed by the late master Wu Tianming, often deemed "father to the Fifth Generation". It reached 85 million yuan after producer Fang Li made headlines by publicly genuflecting to the nation's cinema managers.
Art-house champions saw Song of the Phoenix as evidence that there is a market for such offerings and movie theater chains should heed this pent-up demand.
Other auteur-oriented fare still resorts to star power and international award recognition for publicity, but unlike in previous years, more people apparently are realizing that the quality of a film may not necessarily translate into market performance.
Rao Shuguang, secretary-general of the China Film Association, said that short-term and "non-professional" capital would beat a retreat when it failed to reap the anticipated financial rewards, thus hampering the growth rate of the industry but also squeezing air from the bubble. "Overall, China's film industry is entering a more rational phase of development."
