[2010.11.27] STEPHEN CHOW DISCUSSES THE MAINLAND FILM FUTURE

Stephen Chow Sing Chi yesterday attended the 2010 Boao Youth Forum Hong Kong but stipulated that he would not accept any media interview. At the forum Sing Yeh talked about the Mainland China film development future. Unfortunately Sing Yeh's Putonghua was rather rotten and less than fluent. Speaking of how he selected lead actresses over the years, Sing Yeh joked that looks and figures were the most important.

At the forum Sing Yeh mentioned the Mainland box office. He pointed out that in recent years Mainland box office continued to grow. In 2003 film box office did not reach 1 billion RMB, in 2008 it exceeded 4 billion, in 2009 it exceeded 6.2 billion. The growth was 40%. In the first ten months of 2010 it had 8 billion and the year should exceed 10 billion. He also said that in 2009 the U.S. total box office exceeded 60 billion. The U.S. population was 300 million, the Mainland population was 1.3 billion so it had a lot of time to grow. In 2009 the financial storm hit but the year's growth still exceeded 40%. He felt that when the economy was poor, the audience still wanted to watch movies. Thus he was very optimistic about Mainland films and would only work toward the positive.

Sing Yeh also pointed out that the most important for the Mainland film now is to continuously elevate film quality. The U.S. would make a movie with 1 billion or more because its market allows it to. Mainland film in the future will be able to too. With China's rich cultural resources, it can attract the world and through film bring Chinese culture to the entire world. AVATAR's global box office exceeded US$2.7 billion and 760 million domestically. The global box office was several times more, thus the global box office was very important.

Yesterday the event arranged for the audience to ask questions. Someone asked how Sing Yeh looks for new faces in every film and how he invested? Sing Yeh was caught a little off guard and asked whether he could answer in Cantonese. The event insisted that he spoke Putonghua.

Finally Sing Yeh with the most rotten Putonghua said, "Actually I don't know, 'beauty' is the most important in casting. That's my experience. Her figure has to be good. My experience over the years is like this, thank you!" The host said, "A curious questions gets a curious answer!"