Chapter 541 The Ten-Year Agreement Will Expire

"It's a pity that "People Mountain People Sea" was released."

"It's different now than when I was there. Even if I won the Best Director Award in Venice, I won't have much influence in China."

On the plane back to China, Wu Yuan and the representative of China Film Group were chatting about everything about this Venice Film Festival.

During the festival, he couldn't talk about these things because he was the chairman of the jury. Now that the festival is over, he can finally speak freely.

Wu Yuan was so emotional. Timing is really important.

In the first few years of the millennium, there were not many movies released in China every year. There were only three or five movies released a month. Sometimes the audience had no choice and could only watch one or two movies in the cinema.

At that time, there was little news about movies. After all, the production was low, so there wouldn't be so much news for the media to report.

So when Wu Yuan won the Best Director Award in Berlin with "Departures", it was a national sensation. Various media, big and small, rushed to report it, and cinemas also rushed to chase this movie, which made "Departures" a big hit at the box office after its release.

Now, times have changed.

Hundreds of films are produced every year. Even if most of them cannot be released normally, there are too many films left after the great waves. There are more than ten or twenty films every month.

The major media have no shortage of news reports on the entertainment industry, and cinemas have no shortage of movies to be released.

In addition, it is now completely an era of commercial films, and art films are no longer the center of attention.

Although they both won the Best Director Award of the European Three Majors, "People Mountain People Sea" and director Cai Shangjun did not cause much discussion in China.

Even if Xinhua News Agency personally wrote a report on the news of this Venice International Film Festival, the effect was also average.

The European Three Majors are no longer so popular in China.

In other words, everyone is more concerned about the red carpet show of various celebrities at the opening of the European Three Majors, but they don’t care much about who will win the final award.

Fan Xiaopang’s dragon robe, Li Binbin’s Fu character dress, and other styles will be bought in large quantities in China and swiped all over the Internet.

But whether they really took their works to Venice, whether they were shortlisted for the main competition unit, and whether they won the prize in the end, no one cares.

"Yes, times have changed." A representative of China Film Group Corporation who came to participate in this year's Venice Film Festival also said with some emotion: "Now even movies are not easy to buy and sell."

"In the past, you could make money by selling films in bulk, but now it is getting harder and harder to make money by selling films in bulk."

The domestic film industry is no longer like the situation of a few big cats in the past. The theater schedules are full every month. Even in the off-season months, there are more films than the Lunar New Year films in the first few years of the millennium.

The audience has more choices, and more domestic films are produced. This has forced China Film Group Corporation and other mainland distributors that are qualified to sell films in bulk to no longer care about selling films in bulk.

Ten years ago, deputy general managers and deputy chairman like Han Dong would personally lead teams to Cannes, Berlin, and Venice to buy films and help mainland films contact overseas distributors.

Now, China Film Group Corporation only needs to send a mid-level representative of the company.

The income from copyright transactions has been reduced from half of China Film Group Corporation's income to less than 10%.

To some extent, this is also a good thing.

However, we still need to continue to buy movies in Europe. This is a national policy inclination. The mainland cannot only buy Hollywood movies.

Coincidentally, this China Film representative is responsible for the import and export of movies in China Film Group.

Wu Yuan followed the topic and asked: "Representative Li, I heard that the Sino-US Film Cooperation Treaty signed when China joined the WTO will be changed?"

"The Americans are not very satisfied with the results of the previous negotiations?"

As early as August 1994, the top issued a document, which clearly mentioned the import of 10 films that "basically reflect the world's outstanding civilization achievements and express the achievements of contemporary films."

Of course, 10 is just an approximate number, which can be flexibly controlled in actual operations.

But what are the films that can express "contemporary film achievements"?

Obviously, it is mainly the Hollywood blockbusters in the United States.

First, American blockbusters can bring rich economic benefits to all parties.

Second, the imported films in those years did open the eyes of Chinese audiences.

It should be admitted that the prosperity of the Chinese film market is inseparable from the "stimulation" brought by American blockbusters.

Films such as "Titanic" and "The Mummy" were introduced under this policy, and they also achieved sensational box office and discussion in China, broadening the horizons of domestic audiences.

Later, in 2001, China joined the WTO and signed a series of agreements, including an agreement commitment.

Without damaging the consistency of China's film management regulations, from the time of joining, China will allow the import of films for theater screening in the form of profit sharing, and the number of such imports should be 20 per year.

This annual quota of 20 films cannot be less than one.

Of course, most of them are still Hollywood films, and occasionally one or two will be European or Japanese and Korean films.

However, these agreements refer to films that "enter the country in the form of profit sharing", and batch films bought out at a fixed price are not included.

So in fact, the number of foreign films released in the mainland every year is far more than 20, but only 20 of them can be profit sharing, and the other films are generally bought out at a low price.

The domestic box office market was not big before. If 20 Hollywood movies were introduced into China through the revenue sharing channel in a year, they could already earn a large part of the domestic box office market. Therefore, when the agreement was signed, the Americans were very satisfied.

However, things change. Ten years later, the domestic film market has increased several times. Only 20 revenue sharing movies are introduced in a year, which makes Hollywood lose a lot of market in the mainland.

Many Hollywood blockbusters have no revenue sharing movie quotas, so they either choose to sell them at a low price and go the route of batch films, or simply give up the mainland market and do not release them in the mainland.

The price of batch films is so cheap. China Film and Shanghai Film Group usually only spend tens of thousands of dollars, at most hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy them out. This is a bargain price. Hollywood A-level productions and above will not be happy.

Seeing that the agreement signed when China joined the WTO has reached the 10-year agreement period, now both China and Hollywood are rumored to sign a supplementary agreement again, at least 20 more revenue sharing movies should be introduced into the mainland of China every year.

So Wu Yuan also talked about this matter with the representative of China Film.

"We have no say in this matter." Representative Li shook his head and said, "We have to talk to the US side through the higher-ups."

"And it seems that we have to form a delegation to talk to the US side."

"A big director like you, Director Wu, who is well-known in both China and the United States, should also be a member of the delegation to discuss this matter concerning the cooperation between the two countries in the film market in the next ten years."

"Director Han will definitely go there at that time." (End of this chapter)