Market In Focus: Filmart Aims To Reassert Regional Hub Status Amid Mixed Box Office And Shifting Streaming Landscape In Asia
05.03.2024 - 11:54
/ deadline.com
After a successful return as a physical event last year, Hong Kong International Film & TV Market (Filmart, March 11-14) is taking place again this year against a complicated backdrop, both in terms of market realities and the shifting geopolitics of the region.
Although China’s box office has come roaring back, reaching $1.1BN (RMB8BN) over the recent Lunar New Year holiday, imported films are not sharing in the bonanza and mainland Chinese companies are not participating in international markets at the level they once did.
Last year, Filmart benefitted from the last-minute lifting of China’s strict Covid restrictions, and the reopening of the mainland China-Hong Kong border, and happily welcomed back mainland Chinese participants, including buyers and sales agents, to the show.
However, in the intervening year, Chinese producers have not been hugely focused on exports, and while small contingents of Chinese buyers have been travelling to international markets including Cannes, Berlin and the American Film Market (AFM) in Los Angeles, they have mostly just been window shopping or re-establishing relationships with Western sales companies.
Meanwhile, box office in other territories across the region presents a mixed picture. Japan has also registered decent post-pandemic recovery, but again most of the spoils are going to local productions, in particular big anime franchises, rather than imported films. Both Korea and Hong Kong, dynamic theatrical markets before the pandemic, are lagging in recovery, and while Southeast Asia has some bright spots, including Indonesia and Vietnam, audiences in these markets are very young and lean towards local productions.
Questions are also swirling around the buying appetite