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Takings would rise 11.6 percent to 55 billion
yuan ($8.31 billion) this year, beating 2016 growth of 3.7
percent, said Zhang Hongsen, vice minister of the State
Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film, and
Television.
"The rapid development of the film industry has been a big
bright spot for China's culture industry," Zhang told a press
conference in Beijing.
The Chinese Communist Party is supporting Hollywood-style films
that portray China as the rejuvenated great power described in
this week's speech by President Xi Jinping to the Party
Congress.
"Wolf Warrior 2", a patriotic action movie that has raked in 5.6
billion yuan ($845.59 million) to become China’s
highest-grossing film, depicts a Chinese hero fighting Western
mercenaries in a war-torn African country.
While privately financed, the film has received strong support
from state organizations, and China's film regulators have
submitted it in the foreign-language category at the 2018
Oscars.
Sun Zhijun, deputy director of the Publicity Department of the
Communist Party Central Committee, said films should have social
and "educational" benefits, not just make money.
"We cannot take market share, distribution figures, box office
and audience ratings as the sole standard. We cannot be the
slave of the market and led by the nose," he said at the same
press conference.
After disappointing box office growth in 2016, regulators
announced that all sales grosses would include service fees for
each ticket purchased online. This has boosted this year's
growth, although moviemakers see little of the additional
revenue.
(Reporting by Pei Li and Ben Blanchard; Editing by Stephen
Coates)
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