'Fate
of the Furious' drives China box office to fastest
growth in over a year
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[May 01, 2017] SHANGHAI
(Reuters) - China's box office sales grew at their
fastest pace in over a year in April, driven by the U.S.
action movie "The Fate of the Furious", the eighth
instalment of the high-octane fast car franchise.
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Monthly ticket sales jumped nearly 57 percent from the same
period a year ago to 4.9 billion yuan ($707.5 million), data
from box office tracker EntGroup showed, the largest monthly
growth since February last year.
China's box office, a magnet for Hollywood producers, saw growth
stall last year amid a crackdown on subsidies and a weak slate
of movies. Ticket sales grew under 4 percent in 2016, down
sharply from around 50-percent growth the year before.
After a stronger start this year, China ticket sales slid again
in February and March.
The sharp April rise came on the back of the latest outing from
Universal's hugely-popular Fast and Furious franchise. The film,
released in mid-April in China, has so far raked in $362.7
million in the China market, EntGroup data showed.
Despite a slowdown in box office sales in the market, U.S.
studios are increasingly looking to China to boost global
revenues, though they face issues from a local quota system for
imported films to questions over censorship.
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Hollywood is lobbying to increase the official quota level of 34
imported films a year and to raise the share of sales that
international partners receive, as a revenue-sharing deal struck in
2012 comes up for review this year.
"The Fate of the Furious", which stars Vin Diesel and Jason Statham,
is the second-highest grossing movie of 2017 so far behind "Beauty
and the Beast", with global ticket sales of $1.06 billion, according
to Box Office Mojo.
(Reporting by Adam Jourdan; Editing by Joseph Radford)
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