Left to right: Chinese actors Fan Bingbing, Tony Leung Ka-fai, Huang Xiaoming and Yang Ying (Angelababy) on the red carpet.

Industry insiders have also attributed the success of Warcraft in China to the fact that Legendary Entertainment is owned by Wanda. Indeed, the Chinese conglomerate had been very proactive in promoting the movie ahead of its launch, striking up financial partnerships with fellow Chinese companies like Tencent and Huayi Brothers Media and creating a lot of hype via promotions and merchandising deals, according to Variety.com.

This incident has also served as a reminder of how Chinese companies are becoming increasingly influential in the fate of US films.

Another Chinese company that has a hand in Hollywood productions is Alibaba Pictures, a member of the Alibaba Group. The company runs one of China’s most popular online film box offices on Taobao.com, China’s largest web trading platform.

Some of Alibaba Pictures’ Hollywood investments are in films such as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows, Transformers: The Last Knight, Ice Age: Collision Course and Star Trek Beyond.

“Big budget film projects easily attract large amounts of investment in China but many new directors still face a lack of funding,” said Zhang Qiang, CEO of Alibaba Pictures.

“We have made going to the movies more convenient and we now want to help make filmmaking easier for new directors too. We want to play an active part in the evolution of Chinese film.”

In the US, box office incomes often make up no more than 30 percent of the total revenue while the majority comes from various derivative industries. In China, however, box office takings amount to 80 percent of the revenue.

In order to boost earnings from derivatives, Alibaba is planning to work closely with Hollywood studios to acquire copyrights of the most popular films and characters to create products which will be sold on Taobao.com.

American actress Meg Ryan and Serbian film maker Emir Kusturica announce the Golden Goblet award winners.

The main objective of the derivatives is to tap into the spending habits of Chinese fans, who have proven themselves to be a rather fanatical bunch at times. Huace Group, a leading film and television production company, released a study on this topic at the Shanghai TV Festival, which took place days before the SIFF.

The study showed that Chinese fans have in the past few years demonstrated an incredible spending prowess that has greatly impacted the local film and TV industry. For example, fans had bought advertisements on outdoor LED screens at iconic locations in major cities such as New York, Seoul and Shanghai to celebrate the 15th birthday of Wang Yuan, a member of TF Boys, one of the most popular boy bands in China.

The report said that hundreds of thousands of Wang’s fans “are more than ready to prove their love and support with money”.

Experts say that when a show features a star with a solid fan base, it is more likely to achieve success in the Chinese market, regardless of whether the show is well-produced. This craze with local celebrities has inadvertently boosted the stock of some actors.

Huang Jianxin, one of the film directors participating in the forum at SIFF, said that an actor he worked with once raised his fees by six times as a result of his popularity.