FEATURE
You Are The Apple Of My Eye:
biggest ever Chinese-language release in Hong Kong
Imports get to the core of local tastes
US, Taiwanese and even Indian titles overshadowed Hong Kong fare at its home box office in 2011. Liz Shackleton reports on a territory looking abroad for its next blockbuster
Of My Eye, which grossed nearly $8m at the end of 2011 to become the biggest ever Chinese-language release in Hong Kong. A huge hit in Taiwan, where it was also released
T
by Fox, the fi lm fl ourished on word-of-mouth and repeat viewings. Based on the director’s own expe- riences, the story features a young man on his way to a wedding, reminiscing about his days at high school. “It had a unique way of capturing young movie-
goers as well as older ones,” says Fox’s senior vice- president, Asia Pacifi c, Sunder Kimatrai. “Those experiences of fi rst love, fi rst heartbreak, are so universal they translate to any culture, but they hadn’t been told in this way in this part of the world before.” With its combination of romance and gross-out
humour, the fi lm also managed to appeal to both sexes. More recently, two Hong Kong productions released in March — Ann Hui’s A Simple Life and Pang Ho Cheung’s Love In The Buff — became much-welcomed hits on home territory. By the
■ 32 Screen International at Cannes May 18, 2012
he big surprise at the Hong Kong box offi ce over the past year has been the success of Tai- wanese romantic comedy You Are The Apple
end of April, A Simple Life had grossed $3.57m in Hong Kong, while Love In The Buff, which follows a Hong Kong couple in Beijing, had grossed $3.6m. But on the whole, Hollywood fi lms, particularly
effects-laden 3D spectaculars, continued to rule the roost in Hong Kong — Apple ranked third in the 2011 top 10 behind the latest instalments in the Transformers and Harry Potter series. Likewise, last Christmas, Hong Kong audiences
‘You Are The Apple Of My Eye had a unique way of capturing young movie- goers as well
as older ones’ Sunder Kimatrai, 20th Century Fox International
favoured Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol and Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows over the big Chinese end-of-year release, Tsui Hark’s Flying Swords Of Dragon Gate, despite the latter’s high- quality 3D sequences. And during this year’s Chi- nese New Year holiday (January 23-25), Journey 2: The Mysterious Island streaked ahead of the local Chinese New Year comedies and Dante Lam’s globe-trotting adventure The Viral Factor. As elsewhere around the globe, this trend
towards premium fare is resulting in an overall upwards trend in ticket sales. According to the Hong Kong Motion Picture Industry Associa- tion (MPIA), box office grew by almost 4% to $177.8m (HK$1.38bn) in 2011, despite a decrease
in the number of releases from 286 in 2010 to 276 last year. Hong Kong movies had only a 20.2% market
share in 2011 compared to 22.6% in 2010. Local producers are making fewer fi lms specifi cally for the local market and Hong Kong audiences tend to reject the bigger budget Hong Kong-China co- productions, which make most of their returns on the mainland. Tellingly, the two Hong Kong fi lms to rank in the top 10 — erotic drama 3D Sex And Zen: Extreme Ecstasy and I Love Hong Kong — were not co-productions with China. Hong Kong audiences also seem to have turned
their backs on Korean and Japanese fi lms — no Korean releases and only two Japanese fi lms (The Borrower Arrietty and Umizaru 3: The Last Mes- sage) ranked in the top 100 in 2011. However, another surprise was the success of Bollywood title 3 Idiots, which grossed $3m to rank number 14 in the year-end chart. Edko Films released it nearly two years after its Indian release, as they were waiting for the film to pass censorship in mainland China. Edko’s Audrey Lee says it was 3 Idiots’ humour and subject matter, especially the storyline about »
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