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posted by martyb on Sunday September 02 2018, @06:33PM   Printer-friendly
from the Ticket-to-make-money dept.

Movie madness: Why Chinese cinemas are empty but full

For a country which will soon assume the mantle of the world's largest cinema audience, China comes out with a surprising number of big budget B-grade flops. Some blame this on censorship, others on a lack of creativity but there are also those who see a more sinister force at work, which has nothing to do with film-making.

It also has nothing to do with selling tickets: at least not real ones. Some investors are apparently financially backing movies with the sole goal of boosting their stock price that can shift on the perception of a movie's performance, irrespective of its true popularity.

Chinese film critic and industry observer Raymond Zhou has been digging into the darker side of film financing in his country. "When you have a hit film, your stock price will go up several times in terms of market valuation compared with the grosses from the box office so some 'financial genius', came up with this idea: Why don't I have fake box office numbers so that I can make much more money from the stock market?" he said.

[...] How many hundreds of thousands of seats would a company need to buy to boost the figures enough to make a difference to its own stock price? Well what if the cinema chain is also an investor? It can just sell itself the phantom tickets for free.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 02 2018, @07:40PM (9 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 02 2018, @07:40PM (#729621)

    Yes. Women are gold diggers. Makeup, hair dye, fake nails, revealing clothes, shaved legs, and heeled shoes are all scams.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 02 2018, @09:02PM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 02 2018, @09:02PM (#729640)

    Yes. Women are gold diggers. Makeup, hair dye, fake nails, revealing clothes, shaved legs, and heeled shoes are all scams.

    Those appeared many years after most of the other evolutionary fitness pressures.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 02 2018, @09:27PM (3 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 02 2018, @09:27PM (#729649)

      Women evolved hairless chests to display their breasts to prehistoric men.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 02 2018, @11:19PM (2 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 02 2018, @11:19PM (#729691)

        Makeup, cloths, etc. Are used as signals of fitness. This has flipped a bit as those things have also become wildly cheap and easily made. Women use makeup to cover blemishes and look fertile. They literally use paint and coverings to cover up the fact they are not. It is a survival trait.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 03 2018, @08:13AM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 03 2018, @08:13AM (#729785)

          Another thing I have noticed... when I was a kid, one NEVER saw a woman messing with gym equipment! It was bon-bons and chocolate.

          Now, I see them working out in fitness centers just like the men do, and for the same reasons.

          ( I like it actually, not only that, gym time is a helluva lot cheaper than time spent in department stores! Note how many of those expensive department stores aren't here anymore. You know, those elegant affairs where the ladies would spend in one hour what it took her husband all week to earn. )

          We've come a long way, baby!

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 03 2018, @05:09PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 03 2018, @05:09PM (#729907)

            Department stores disappearing are for economic reasons.

            I have had a few discussions with owners of stores in those mega malls. The building owners are typically absent. Usually in another country. They will try to lock you into 10 year leases when you are just starting out. So you get the one year. Which means you can not renovate and must move at a moments notice if some other store offers more for you space. They allow vendors to openly harass their customers as they walk through the malls with the standup kiosks. So people avoid the worn down places. They can get the exact same junk on the internet for the same or better price. This is a form of herd behavior. All of their friends do that so they can brag 'oh I got this from AMAZON' look how thrifty I am, but look how amazing I am being cheap. Malls were an extension of the same behavior of showing off to the herd how fit you were. Online shopping is currently filling that role. It shows how 'tech savy' you are which is currently a thing.

            I too walk by those fitness places. There are dozens of them near me. They almost always 90% empty at any time of the day with the few die hards filling it in. But the places have quite a large clientele. I hear all the time about 'their gym' and how 'they need to go this week'.

            Do not confuse fad for failure. Some last longer than others. The 'tell' for it is 'this is a new economy'. It is almost certainly a fad.

  • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday September 02 2018, @10:38PM (1 child)

    by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Sunday September 02 2018, @10:38PM (#729676) Journal

    Funny, I thought it was Men Going Their Own Way, not Men Drunkenly Banging On The Door Begging Women To Take Them Back While Whining About How Fake They Are. You are *obsessed,* child.

    --
    I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 03 2018, @08:18AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 03 2018, @08:18AM (#729788)

      Men? Don't get me started. Seems like they pride themselves on acting like animals, calling it "testosterone", then reverting to some sort of gorilla.

      Especially if in gatherings when beer is involved.

          Men + Sports + Beer -> Animals!

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 02 2018, @10:38PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 02 2018, @10:38PM (#729677)

    and expensive dresses

  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday September 04 2018, @02:18AM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday September 04 2018, @02:18AM (#730078) Journal

    Women are gold diggers. Makeup, hair dye, fake nails, revealing clothes, shaved legs, and heeled shoes are all scams.

    So what? It's tiresome hearing people whining because other people have different interests and thus pursue behavior that conflicts with the whiner's interests. Gold digging works, your complaints do not.

    As an aside, this does explain how things like fraud are so ingrained in the human psyche. A lot of your ancestors got to be ancestors because they didn't play entirely fair. That creates a strong evolutionary pressure for any traits that pass on the ability to scam.