Top grossing Chinese film sets a record

Lost on Journey is a comedy released in 2010. It earned about 50 million yuan in box office revenues. Hua Qi believes that Enlight Media has benefited from misleading audiences about the relationship of the two films and it pointed out in the complaint that Enlight Media's shares soared during the period when Lost in Thailand was being shown in cinemas. It had taken 538 million yuan in revenues from the movie by the end of Jan 27, 43 percent of its total ticket sales. The remaining 57 percent was distributed among other interested parties including the theaters.

Wuhan Hua Qi said in the complaint that a comparison shows the two films have many fundamental similarities, including their names, plots and actors' lines, that infringed the copyright of the original production. Xu Zheng and Wang Baoqiang starred in both of the films.

"Whether Hua Qi will win the lawsuit depends on the evidence it can offer but, normally speaking, the indemnity for copyright infringement is less than 1 million yuan in China," said Liu Yongpei, a director and partner in the intellectual property department of Yingke Law Firm's Shanghai Office.

If the evidence proves that Enlight Media's actions have caused Hua Qi losses or Enlight Media has benefited from what it has done, and at the same time the evidence is approved by the court, the compensation is allowed to exceed 1 million yuan, said Liu.

"The point is it's very hard to prove the correlation between the two issues. It is almost impossible," Liu added.

As a listed media and entertainment company, Enlight Media predicted that its net profit in the first quarter was between 76.89 million yuan and 82.8 million yuan, up between 290 percent and 320 percent year-on-year.

It contributed the significant growth to the rosy box office performance of the low-budget comedy Lost in Thailand in the period. It premiered on Dec 12. The film has become the highest-grossing Chinese film on the mainland to date with record ticket sales of 1.26 billion yuan, according to EntGroup Consulting, a Beijing-based entertainment industry consultancy firm.

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