LOS ANGELES, Oct. 3 (Xinhua) -- Ticket sales for Hollywood studio products in the Chinese market fell down by 24 percent so far this year, the Hollywood Reporter said Wednesday.
The report cited data issued last week by box-office analyst Rance Pow, CEO of consultancy Artisan Gateway, saying total tickets sales in China for U.S. studio imports in the first nine months had fallen to 1.64 billion U.S. dollars from 2.17 billion dollars during the same period in 2017.
Pow explained that Hollywood's shortfall has been "made up for by a surge in Chinese-language box office," which jumped up 46.7 percent to 4.28 billion dollars during the same period from last year's 2.92 billion dollars.
Six films have earned more than 300 million dollars at the Chinese box office in 2018 to date, but only one, Marvel and Disney's Avengers: Infinity War which earned 359.5 million dollars, was from Hollywood.
Two factors contributed to the market shifts, the report said, including the increased quality of Chinese filmmaking and ongoing cinema construction in China's rural regions, which "tend to be less cosmopolitan and less receptive to foreign content."
"What we see is that as we go further and further into the rural markets, the box office indeed continues to grow, but most of that success is weighted in major Chinese-language films -- which means that Chinese tastes in film, and what sells big tickets, is becoming more and more local," Pow said.
The report also said that the North American and Chinese markets both saw robust growth, with China's total box office climbing 13.7 percent for the year so far, while the North American box office's summer ticket sales rose by 14 percent.
