The development potential for Chinese mainland's film market remains huge as the number of people turning up at the theaters there is still low, said Amy Liu, partner of EntGroup, at a panel on Sino-foreign co-produced films hosted by China Daily on Thursday.

According to EntGroup's report, from 2012 to 2016, the Chinese mainland's box office revenue has increased 168 percent and the number of screens jumped 214 percent. And that's not all. The number of tickets sold has risen 197 percent, indicating a far faster growth of the film industry in Chinese mainland, than in the United States.

In the US, while box-office profit has risen 5 percent in the past five years and screen number increased 3 percent, the number of tickets sold has dropped 3 percent.

The EntGroup report mentioned that China has signed cooperation agreements for co-producing films with 14 countries, including South Korea, India, Singapore and Belgium and the number is still rising.

Liu pointed out the Sino-foreign co-produced film market is marching into 3.0 stage, having come a long way since Chinese filmmakers' first co-production with Hollywood studios with The Unfinished Chess Game, released in 1982.

However, Liu said the problem for Sino-foreign co-produced film projects now is that while the box office is increasing, the return on investments is poor. Filmmakers would do well to know their audience and the market better, she suggested, adding that they may need to be clearer about their positioning, pay more attention to the creation of content and talent construction, as well as keep improving their overseas distribution abilities.

tingduan@chinadailyhk.com

(HK Edition 03/17/2017 page2)