source from:wsj
CHINA REAL TIME REPORT
Will China Go Gaga for ‘La La Land’?

Jan 25, 2017 4:18 pm HKT
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BEIJING—Chinese audiences generally don’t go wild for movie musicals, tending to be put off by scenes in which actors burst into song and dance for no apparent reason.

Promoters here hope “La La Land,” which scored a record-tying 14 Oscar nominations, will be a rare exception when it debuts here Feb. 14.

Wary of Chinese audiences’ indifference to musicals, the local distributors are highlighting the love-story elements—even comparing it with 1997′s “Titanic,” which was China’s highest-grossing film for years.

Joy Pictures Inc., which bought the rights to distribute the film in China from Lions Gate Entertainment Corp., said it is also heavily marketing the film outside Beijing and Shanghai, which tend to have stronger awareness of Western films.

“Chinese audiences are more sophisticated than we thought,” said Zhang Jin, Joy’s chief executive. “I want to prove that audiences in the third-and-fourth-tier cities also appreciate a mind-blowing film like this.”

Mr. Zhang can hardly be blamed for downplaying the musical elements. The Oscar-winning musical “Les Miserables” raked in more than 148 million dollars in the U.S. in 2012, but made less than 10 million dollars in China. More recently, the musical “Annie” earned a painful 503,300 dollars here.


“La La Land,” which stars Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling as struggling entertainers in Los Angeles, won a record seven Golden Globes this month. Its 14 Oscar nominations Tuesday —tying “Titanic” and “All About Eve”—makes it a heavy favorite to dominate the Academy Awards next month.

But Oscar buzz isn’t necessarily gold to Chinese audiences, Mr. Zhang said, especially since the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences often favors art-house fare over crowd-pleasing blockbusters.

To attract young moviegoers, Mr. Zhang said Joy Pictures has struck marketing deals with major companies to promote the film in return for a slice of the box-office take. These partners include the film arm of Tencent Holdings Ltd., which owns the WeChat and QQ social networks; the film branch of iQiyi.com, the video-streaming site owned by Baidu Inc.; and Wanda Pictures, the film arm of real-estate and entertainment conglomerate Dalian Wanda Group.

The Valentine’s Day release is no accident—the film will be marketed as a “date-night” experience.

That was a big break for Joy Pictures, since it’s rare for a foreign title to get regulators’ permission to open on a day typically reserved for Chinese-made romance titles. It probably didn’t hurt that one of Lions Gate’s financing partners on “La La Land” was TIK Films, owned by China’s Hunan TV & Broadcast Intermediary Co.

The film is also getting a push in China from Mr. Gosling and writer-director Damien Chazelle, who appeared at a Beijing news conference Tuesday, hours before the Academy Awards nominations were announced.

Staying on message, Messrs. Chazelle and Gosling—who is known as “Gao Siling” (Commander Gao) to Chinese fans—used a traditional brush pen and ink to inscribe the Chinese character for “love” on large posters. “To be able to open this film in China is a huge honor,” said Mr. Chazelle, adding his film was “about love and dreams.”

Mr. Zhang did not disclose how much his company paid for Chinese distribution rights, saying only that it was in the “millions of dollars.” The film doesn’t fall under the 34-film import quota that applies to most foreign releases because Lions Gate is not sharing in the revenue.

Mr. Zhang said other Chinese film companies had passed on the distribution rights, wary of a “musical with art-house bearing.” He said he was confident he “bet it right.”

“I don’t want to give a number now about how much I expect the film to gross in China,” he said. “But I hope China would contribute to half of the film’s global revenue.”

– Lilian Lin