Surprise winners

Ticket buyers take films unpopular with critics to the top of the box office during the recent three-day holiday. Xu Fan explores why.

Hollywood filmmakers may find the world's second-largest market increasingly looking like a maze.

Commonly in a mature movie industry, giant budgets and good stories secure the box office. However, the dark-horse Chinese blockbusters that galloped to the top during the recent May Day holiday have upended all the rules to win a "surprising" market.

Silent Separation, featuring a seven-year romance marathon of two college students, won only 3.5 points out of 10 on Douban.com, one of the country's largest film review websites.

The Left Ear, adapted from the namesake best-selling novel, features a 17-year-old's rosy dream of having a lover whisper sweet words into her deaf left ear, amid the grueling youth years. It scored at an average 5.5 of 10 on several major film review sites.

Though harshly slashed for the "badly piled" storylines and coarse acting, both youth-themed movies were adapted from best-selling novels, and have performed well at the box office.

On the first day of the May Day holiday, Silent Separation, the 60-million-yuan ($9.67 million) romance film brought in 78.9 million yuan to overtake the $250-million Hollywood blockbuster Fast and Furious 7 and top the mainland box office.

During the following two days, Silent Separation slumped a bit but stuck to the No 2 spot - and was back on top again on Monday.

The latest figures show that the movie, starring A-listers Huang Xiaoming and Yang Mi, grossed 251 million yuan in the five days after its April 30 premiere, according to Piaofangba.net, an online service that monitors the real-time box office.

The Left Ear was another surprise for industry insiders.

As the directorial debut of Taiwan pop-star-turned-filmmaker Alec Su, the movie revolved on the third or fourth slot during the three-day holiday, and has so far grossed a total of 409 million yuan since its mainland release on April 24.

Most film critics attribute the commercial success to the two movies' solid fan bases, thanks to the popularity of the novels and the casts.

Silent Separation, inspired from the namesake 2003 hit online novel, was adapted to be a 36-episode hit TV series and topped audience ratings by 1.7 percent in January.

In addition, with around 171,000 fans who have written more than 1.8 million reviews - most of which sing praise of the stars - on Baidu Tieba, China's largest online fan forum of its kind, the movie appears to give birth to a safe market calculation.

Even the producers admit the project is initially conceived more as a commercial product than an artistic title.

Huang Bin, the director of Silent Separation, defines himself as a "product manager".

"The movie, in some sense, is a kind of entertaining product. The booming industry has become more and more market-oriented. We've done research on the possible number of fans turning to ticket-buyers by taking analysis on the big data," says the former movie-marketing veteran, who adds that similar-themed movies' success in the recent years also convinced producers in general.

Since top actress Zhao Wei's directorial debut, So Young, took in a record 726 million yuan in 2013, youth-themed movies have emerged as a favorite genre for major film studios. Such nostalgia resonates with the mainstream moviegoers, who were born in the 1980s and 1990s.

The following blockbusters include the Tiny Times franchise (earning around 1 billion yuan for the three installments), and The Continent (grossing 650 million yuan) respectively directed by best-selling novelists-turned-directors Guo Jingming and Han Han.

When Fleet of Time, starring Canadian Chinese star Eddie Peng Yuyan, topped last December's box office by hitting 578 million yuan, the youth-themed movies soared to a major attraction for investors.

"The youth-themed movies have made a wave in the market in recent years. But the genre will definitely get boring for moviegoers. I just can't estimate when this golden time will come to an end," Huang says at a high-end forum during the 5th Beijing International Film Festival.

The Left Ear, though cast with starlets, is winning moviegoers for its adaption of Rao Xueman's 2006 namesake best-selling novel, and its director Alec Su.

Su, 42, was among the earliest Taiwan stars to become popular in the Chinese mainland, for his musical career in Taiwan's first-ever boy band Little Tigers. The handsome star drew more notice for his noble role in the 1997 hit TV series My Fair Princess.

A big number of screenings is regarded as another key to win the box office.

The screenings of Silent Separation accounted for nearly 33 percent of the 23,600 silver screens in 5,540 theaters on its first day. The Left Ear took around 30 percent on its debut.

However, it has sparked protest from veteran filmmakers behind art-house titles competing in the same holiday season. Award-winning director Wang Xiaoshuai, for example, watched his latest movie Red Amnesia struggle to get 1 percent of screenings for his premiere on the same day Silent Separation debuted.

"It was the darkest day in my career. All my effort has failed in front of the grueling reality. I'm quite desperate and doubt if I can still pursue my film dream," says the director famed for Beijing Bicycle, a Silver Bear winner at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2001.

Red Amnesia is a nominee for the main competition section of the 71th Venice International Film Festival, and has so far scored eight out of 10 on major Chinese film sites.

The art-house romance Murmur of the Heart, directed by Taiwan veteran female filmmaker Sylvia Chang, also got around 1 percent of screening slots when it premiered on April 30.

Wang slashes the low screenings for art-house titles as "predesigned murder", a sign that this is "the worst age" for serious moviemakers.

However, some Chinese film critics regard the phenomenon as natural in a developing market.

"Art-house productions naturally belong to limited viewers, most of whom prefer to watch the titles at home, through the Internet or on DVDs," says Han Haoyue, a veteran film critic. "However, moviegoers flocking to theaters are taking it as a social lifestyle."

"The mainstream ticket buyers may hardly read the reviews by professional critics. They don't care if it's a good movie. They just want to watch the movies that most of the people in their social circles have watched, and then enjoy the pleasure of joining the conversation about a sensational topic," Han says.

Contact the writer at xufan@chinadaily.com.cn