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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 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.