IMAX Corporation CEO Richard L. Gelfond in Shanghai for "Tangshan Earthquake/Hua Yi" Press Conference
IMAX and Hua Yi had a press conference the other day stating that the two companies were going to be co-producing three Chinese IMAX films. The first fo these would be Feng Xiaogang’s Tangshan Earthquake. It is expected to premiere July 10th 2010 in China, and will be shown in IMAX locations in major cities in North America, as well as the 25-30 IMAX theaters in China.
Feng Xiaogang at the press conference stated he wants a 500 million yuan box office. That’s 73 million USD, a gigantic sum for any movie, but it’s a pretty large target for the Chinese market whose top two grossing films had around 300 million. It’s unclear if he meant to include overseas grosses though.
Most of the IMAX theaters are located in North America (Canada and the US) as of now, but I expect the number in China to grow rapidly in the next few years, especially since Chinese theater-building is already a booming project, and funding for such construction is probably more easily obtained than in the US. With IMAX directly interested in supporting Chinese IMAX films, the construction of such theaters should be that much easier.
Wikipedia has a list of the IMAX theaters in the world if anyone is interested, although it only lists 12 for China, not the 25-30 stated, probably because many have been newly built and will be built before Tangshan Earthquake premieres.
Hua Yi CEO Wang Zhongjun, aka the older Hua Yi brother
the Bug’s Life 3D attraction at Disney’s California Adventure had stuff on the chair (not sure if they still do), that when the lights turn off for the show to begin, you hear bugs speaking supposedly arriving at the show, and stuff moving on your seat. LOL
@cfensi
not sure about imax, but they have them at those 3D theaters. I remember going to one in elementary school in Beijing. It was in a place called”Happy Valley”
@yelei
It’s mainly the film industry that is growing the fastest…
Although China’s music scene is changing pretty quickly too. Hopefully for the better.
The tv/drama side is pretty stagnant, but I think Chinese drama has always been fairly high quality, and high-budgeted, but they just lack in heavily publicized idol dramas aimed at the teen audience.
Which is why I’m interested in Meteor Shower…even though that looks on the lower-budgeted end. *sigh*
@idarklight
How many imax theaters have that? They shouldn’t put that in Sichuan. -_-
they should add in those moving chairs to make the effects of the earthquake even more obvious.
oh man, i love the fact that China is growing at a rapid speed.