Some producers have even triggered disputes to stimulate people's curiosity about a movie. For instance, some people went to watch Switch just to see if it was as bad as others said it to be. The trick has worked because the film has grossed nearly 300 million yuan at the box office even though most viewers didn't like it.

Tiny Times, despite being hugely controversial, toppled Man of Steel from the top spot. Perhaps the debate on the values of young people that it deals with has helped sell the film to its target audience. But some film industry professionals are worried that if there is a spate of films that just copy the elements of a successful one, it will alienate audiences in the long run.

The box office success of domestic films, to some extent, also reflects the interests and tastes of "middle China", because most of the new cinemagoers are from second- and third-tier cities and their tastes are different from those in first-tier cities. It is thus likely that this support for domestic films will wane. "Experience tells us that viewers' interests could gradually switch from domestic to overseas movies," says Yin Hong, a professor at Tsinghua University's School of Journalism and Communication. So despite the improvements in content and marketing strategies, Chinese movies cannot expect to draw cinemagoers for a long time.

"For many people, the box office reflects the market scale. But the movie market is not about the box office alone. When we look at the entire market, China still lags far behind the US," says Huang Qunfei, CEO of New Film Association, which runs a chain of 100 cinemas across the country.

In the US, the box office usually accounts for only 22 percent of the total revenue generated by a film. The rest comes from non-theatrical releases and film-related products such as books, toys and even theme parks. But in China, the box office accounts for more than 80 percent of a film's total revenue. Therefore, the record box office revenue in the first six months doesn't mean domestic movies have become more competitive.

"We should not be so optimistic. We are still far behind Hollywood. For me, film production is still a gamble," says Wang Changtian, the CEO of Enlight Media, a private listed company whose films contributed 29 percent of the box office revenue in the first half of this year.

And if it is a gamble, we have to keep our fingers crossed.

The author is a reporter with China Daily.

E-mail: zhujin@chinadaily.com.cn.

(China Daily 07/12/2013 page9)