Talking Entertainment: China Makes Ten Movie Screens a Day, Plus Chicago Musical on the Radar

Nick Richards | Nov 15, 2013 1:00 pm | Add a comment | 2690 reads

Chinese audiences love going to the movies so much that ten new movie screens are made per day in the country. Six million people are expected to go to the movies in China this year, and more cinemas need to be built to meet this growing demand, according to Xinmin.cn. A further 150,000 screens need to pop up to meet the US's ratio of screens per capita.

China surpassed Japan this year to become the world's second-largest film market, and a shortage of cinemas isn't the only roadblock to driving the industry forward. Director Feng Xiaogang told the Hollywood Reporter in an interview that the domestic film industry is being held back by censors as filmakers are constantly asking themselves how regulators will react to their ideas.

Censorship and making the yuan a transferrable currency are also stucks when it comes to foreign investment in the entertainment industry. These are issues currently being discussed in the Third Party Plenum, and it is expected that steps will be taken to ease investment from overseas. A big part of this will be the relaxing of the Chinese Film Bureau's grip of over what films get through, although they still want to see "positive Chinese images in films."

RELATED: Universal Moves to Beijing

To find out more about Beijing's cinemas, our sister website, Beijing-Kids recently ran a great series of reviews which can be read here.

And on that note, here are two big movie releases to look forward to this week:

Gravity, Nov 19
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, Nov 21

On the stage, the much-loved Broadway spectacle Chicago, or a version of it, may be showing in Beijing at the end of January. We came across this information through online ticket vendors Damai.cn who are already selling tickets to the performance. The musical's official website still has no news about an international tour and the listed venue, Beijing Exhibition Theater hasn't posted anything about it on their website. They told us on the phone this morning that tickets still aren't on sale and details haven't been confirmed. We'll be following this closely.

NCPA has a dance festival underway and they are currently presenting Genesis, which the South China Morning Post reviewed with interest and describes as " inspired by the sprawling and chaotic megacity that is Beijing today."

Here are some more upcoming arts and entertainment events: