Firms to take stars' pay down to earth

Nine major Chinese production companies of films and TV series released a joint statement on Saturday saying no to so-called "sky-high payments" for actors.

According to the statement, financial remuneration for actors cannot exceed 40 percent of the overall budget of any of their future productions. Lead actors can only earn 70 percent of the cast's total pay, the statement added.

The companies also set salary caps demanding that an actor can get paid 50 million yuan ($7.3 million, including taxes) at most for an entire TV series, and 1 million yuan tops for each TV series episode.