Asia's Hollywood

Chinese Yuan all the way

Asia has the most people. If all can get rich, box office going to be in billions easily.

I think China is already doing this by bringing more and more foreigners into their media industry.

You can see that with Youth with You, with them bringing in Lisa to attract international interest, and Chuang, which brought Japanese & Thai trainees in probably for the same reason.

Quote from VVisual

The Asian market is in the billions already. The top box offices in 2019 before the pandemic:

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The East Asian market, especially, is massive where China/Japan/Korea are in the top 5 and together matches the English speaking market of the US/UK/Canada/Australia.

But the Chinese box is still growing while that of the US/Canada had pretty much reached its full potential. In 2020, the China box office and a Chinese war film "The 800" were biggest respectively in the world.

This year, as shown in the original post above, the gap between the Chinese box office and the US is even larger. It is a trend that will continue to grow in the coming years.

Lee Sooman knows exactly what he is talking about when he called for Asia's Hollywood in China. This is really the economic future of East Asian entertainment.

(Bollywood is also a major Asian film market as people know. But from what I read, its revenues are very small for the size of the country -- smaller than South Korea's -- and worse there is little growth. In fact, Indian theater numbers had been static for years. There are 10,000 screens in India while in China, they've expanded to 75000 screens in just the past few years.)

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Total revenue is already in billions. I am referring to per film basis. I mean China alone can get to 1 billion gross per film if the scenario is right. Detective Chinatown 3 had all the hype but word of mouth prevented it from becoming the first 1 billion usd grosser in a single territory.

Quote from VVisual

I was reading that two films premiering on the same weekend and each making over $600M is unprecedented. "Hi Mom!" made over $810M and its popularity was completely word of mouth! Unlike Detective Chinatown, it is not a franchise and is instead a family oriented comedy so it was a real big surprise.

Without "Mom", DC3 could have crossed $1B. Maybe DC4 will :)

DC3 had a $400 million opening weekend but failed to make $300 million total after that. It broke a lot of records but I don't think it would have broken 1 billion even if Hi Mom was not there. It was the worst received film of the franchise. New Year curse exists when the number 1 debut film didn't win the box office just like Chuang center curse.

Quote from VVisual

DC3 might have disappointed after that incredible opening weekend.

But it really took pan-Asian collaboration to another level by starring Japanese and Thai talent (like Chuang 2021!):

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It would so cool to have Asian films breaking $1Billion. But you need the biggest markets in China, Japan and Korea to act together to allow synchronized openings. This is Lee Sooman's vision. The Korean market is too small for K-Ent's ambitions. KPOP is great but grosses in music is much smaller than cinema. The social and cultural impact is far less as well.

A lot of countries in Asia have talent and personel. I think Thailand and Vietnam

produce some pretty good quality film and dramas. The problem is the market size. A common Asian market where a Thai or Viet filmmaker can reach across borders would raise the level for everyone.

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In order to achieve a big Asian market, large population countries need to get rich. Second is politics. Too many problems in that department to get any unity, especially for East Asia.