The Movie Market in the Middle Kingdom

Guild member Kevin Geiger -- presently running an animation company in China -- sends us factoids on the Chinese movie business.

* [China] comprises the fastest-growing animation market in the world. With a total population exceeding 1.3 billion individuals, potentially 500 million people in mainland China can be identified as animation consumers ...

* Mainland China’s total 2010 box office is estimated at more than 10 billion RMB (approximately $1.5 billion USD), up over 60% from 2009 (which itself saw a 44% growth rate) ...

* There are currently just over 6,200 movie screens on the Chinese mainland, compared with more than 42,000 in the United States. Mainland China produced over 500 films in 2010, but few of these make it to theaters and China’s box office is still relatively small compared to North America’s. At present, 31 cities – each with at least 1 million residents – are without commercial movie theaters ...

* China’s current 6,000+ screen total includes more than 1,000 3D screens, making it the second-largest 3D market in the world ...

* Mainland China is currently the world’s largest internet market by user, and poised to be one of the world’s largest VOD markets. Legitimate DVD is a sparse revenue stream due to piracy ...

Mr. Geiger, who has been in China for a few years now, reports that the growth rate of the country's entertainment industry has been "astonishing." He thinks that the more it opens itself to outside competition, the stronger and larger it will become. (At present, China only shares revenues with 20 foreign film imports per year.)

We sometimes get a little insular back here on the fruited plain, thinking that the movie business revolves around our fine American entertainment conglomerates, and that cartoons begin and end with Pixar-Disney-DreamWorks. Such, as the numbers above indicate, is not necessarily the case.