Chapter 829: Master of Scamming

After more than a decade of cooperation and development, Warner Brothers was now a behemoth in the film merchandise industry. Naturally, the successful rollout of these secondary products relied on a flawless organizational system. Films had never survived on the box office alone. Instead, they depended on a complete industrial chain and a robust operational framework to provide diversified support for the film industry.

Compared to Hollywood, the development of "post-release merchandise" in Chinese cinema lagged severely behind, but this also meant there was immense room for growth in China's "merchandise market."

No market started out perfectly mature. A developmental phase was inevitable, and Hollywood had gone through its own chaotic period.

As far as Duke knew, a handful of domestic Chinese films had already made attempts at fully developing "film merchandise."

For example, the producers of The Promise once announced plans to enter the merchandise market through online games, books, musicals, cartoons, and theme parks. Unfortunately, a disastrous box office run meant most of these plans remained mere concepts, never seeing the light of day. After National Master Zhang's Lunar New Year blockbuster A Simple Noodle Story hit theaters, its online game Mazi Noodle Shop launched alongside it, and The Founding of a Republic released tie-in products like lighters...

However, these piecemeal efforts were merely better than nothing, failing to make any major contribution to the films' overall revenues.

Although this was the China-US Film Forum, Duke was the only truly famous figure attending from Hollywood, and the forum spent most of its time revolving around Chinese cinema. Duke had participated quite earnestly at first, but once the topic shifted to how Chinese films should win more support from domestic audiences and theaters, he settled comfortably into the role of a spectator.

Listening to the constant chatter in the theater, Duke kept his ears open and his mouth shut.

He had been in Shanghai for two days now, and just like his previous visits, Duke had browsed through a wealth of firsthand, up-to-date information on Chinese cinema and the local film market.

Why support domestic films? This wasn't simply a question of patriotism. The Chinese and American film industries had already reached a new strategic cooperation agreement. The biggest victims of this deal were actually those "bad films" that had already begun shooting with the intention of making a quick buck in the Chinese market.

In response, someone had even listed 100 bad films released in theaters over the past two years. After a round of merciless mockery, they offered a relieved sigh: opening the market to Hollywood was actually a purification of Chinese cinema. Viewers really wouldn't have to face a screen full of such garbage anymore.

Ever since a certain key figure visited the US in February, resulting in a strategic agreement to further open the Chinese film market to America, the Chinese film industry had been wailing in despair. Many people soberly realized that the wolf was truly at the door.

Just how much of an impact would this agreement have on Chinese cinema? For the audience, it didn't matter much; after all, there would simply be more good movies to watch. For theater managers, there would be more money to make.

The ones most affected were the Chinese film producers—namely, the directors and investors.

Therefore, they were the ones shouting the loudest at the forum, demanding support for domestic films.

Ninety-five percent of Chinese cinema's revenue relied on the domestic box office, making the importance of theater chains glaringly obvious. Inevitably, the forum polarized, with film production and distribution companies nearly at each other's throats with the theater chain representatives.

Listening to their arguments and thinking back to the statistical materials from the Warner Greater China Region he had just reviewed, Duke gradually understood what they were debating.

Ever since April, almost all the mainstream domestic theater chains had become targets of directors' complaints. Films like An Inaccurate Memoir, Full Circle, 11 Flowers, and Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale—many of these movies claimed to be finely crafted "works of sincerity." When the box office disappointed, the directors began looking for excuses. Aside from marketing and distribution issues, inadequate screening schedules in theaters became their primary scapegoat.

By May, this condemnation reached a fever pitch, because the theater chains had allocated nearly seventy percent of their screens to Duke's The Avengers.

To the theater chain representatives, however, these complaints were absurd.

There was no denying that these works held a certain level of artistic merit. But from a theater's perspective, they were simply part of the market—commodities supplied to the audience by distributors. Theaters scheduled more screenings for whatever the audience wanted to see. It was only natural.

As a result, the theater chain representatives felt deeply frustrated by the accusations.

A theater chain representative from Guangdong poured out his grievances.

"Let's just look at the recent past. Last weekend, nine movies premiered at my theater, and I only have ten screens in total. Even if I assigned one screen per movie, how many showings could I schedule in a day? They're all new releases, and most of the distributors didn't even bother marketing them. When audiences come to buy tickets, they don't even know what these movies are. In comparison, look at how famous The Avengers is. Viewers explicitly ask for tickets to The Avengers. What, do you expect us to tell them, 'Don't watch The Avengers, you're Chinese, you should support domestic films, go watch a local movie'?"

Faced with the accusations from the directors and production companies present, the theater chains clearly had no intention of taking the blame for hindering the development of domestic cinema. Another representative stood up to fiercely rebut the claims, stating that it wasn't that they didn't want to schedule many domestic films, but rather that their themes and content were so awful that audiences simply wouldn't buy it.

"How awful? So awful that even I can't stomach watching them during previews. Fundamentally, our attitude toward domestic directors is built on respect. Globally speaking, every director goes through a growth process with peaks and valleys. No one can guarantee that just because one film was a disaster, the next won't be a masterpiece. We also know that audiences have diverse tastes, but some films..."

The representative hesitated for a moment, ultimately choosing not to say it directly.

"It's not convenient for me to name names, but you can tell from the audience's reactions—not a single person calls them good movies. On what grounds should we support films like that? Over the past two years, not only have these kinds of movies not decreased, but they have steadily increased every month. Someone online even tallied it up: of the more than two hundred Chinese films released in theaters last year, a hundred of them were trash fully deserving the moniker of 'master of scamming.' In the past, when the market wasn't open, we had no choice but to show these films during the slow seasons. But now that we have a choice, why shouldn't we screen highly profitable, critically acclaimed Hollywood movies?"

In this representative's view, aside from the genuine "bad films" currently showing, there were also many indescribably "bizarre films."

"Actually, some of these movies aren't necessarily bad, but you know at first glance that they absolutely have no market. Just as Wang Xiaoshuai himself said earlier, he knew 11 Flowers definitely wouldn't sell well. Since that's the case, why force it into theaters? The theaters that join our chains today are managed as corporate entities. As a business, we have to calculate our margins. Why on earth would I set aside a profitable movie just to run one that loses money? Especially since our theaters are located in prime commercial districts. Rent, utilities, and labor all have to be factored into our costs."

"Wang Xiaoshuai knows the hardships of commercial theater chains today..."

The person who stood up to speak was a film company boss, apparently the investor behind 11 Flowers.

"That is precisely why there is a stronger call to establish art-house theater chains, allowing art films like his 11 Flowers to be screened in dedicated venues. These kinds of theater chains should be subsidized by the state."

The moment these words came out, many people in the audience quietly rolled their eyes.

The theater chain representative clearly harbored resentment toward the people who invested in such films and stubbornly shoved them into cinemas. The words that followed were far less polite.

"While I strongly agree with establishing art-house theater chains, I do not agree with them screening some of the films by the sixth generation directors."

He stood straight up and said, "If the government is providing subsidies, then the government itself represents the vast majority of the people. The things it subsidizes should represent the needs of a broad demographic. However, the works of the sixth generation directors are mostly intuitive, experiential films told from highly personal perspectives. Take Jia Zhangke's small-town themes or Wang Xiaoshuai's Third Front nostalgia. These things belong exclusively to them personally. The fact that they can find investors to film them simply means those investors agree with the directors' viewpoints. But from the audience's perspective, since they can't draw box office numbers in commercial theaters, it proves that far too few people resonate with them. Therefore, if establishing art-house chains only means screening movies like these, isn't that equivalent to taking the majority's taxpayer money to serve the desires of a tiny minority?"

The film company boss was instantly left speechless.

However, the theater chain representative was also a smart man, and he immediately shifted the topic.

"Theater chains are commercial companies, not charitable organizations. We also face immense operational pressure. Without sufficient profit, how are we supposed to feed the massive number of employees under us? How do we maintain the company's normal operations?"

This was extremely straightforward logic. People should indeed have higher artistic pursuits, but a commercial company's sole pursuit was profit. It was an immutable truth that no one could argue against.

He added, "In my view, rather than trying to find workarounds with the theater chains, you would be better off improving the quality of the films themselves and churning out fewer garbage movies. As long as the film's quality is solid and the audience is willing to buy tickets, how could we possibly refuse to schedule screenings?"

"So, I believe the crux of the issue doesn't lie with the theaters themselves..."

The representative's eloquence was quite impressive, steering the conversation back to film production itself. "It lies in the production and distribution companies reducing the number of bad films. As for the truly awful and highly niche movies, it's best not to push them into theaters at all."

Naturally, the topic shifted to film production. The theater chain representatives, much like Duke, settled in to watch the show. It was now the directors' turn to complain—the screenwriters were useless, the actors demanded exorbitant salaries, and without money, how could there be good movies?