Qingdao Movie Metropolis, a mega movie industry center with an investment of 50 billion yuan ($7.9 billion), opened in Qingdao, Shandong province during the May Day holiday, giving a major boost to the domestic film industry as "China's Hollywood".

Wang Jianlin, the project's major initiator and chairman of Chinese conglomerate Dalian Wanda Group, said that it aims to build the movie metropolis into a "new global hub for films".

"The establishment of the movie metropolis is a milestone for the industrialization of the Chinese film industry. It will help promote Chinese films to go to the world stage," said Wang.

Wanda Group, as a commercial giant covering a wide range of areas including culture, real estate and finance, also controls AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc and US studio Legendary Entertainment.

The metropolis covers an area equivalent to more than 200 football fields. In addition to world-leading film-related infrastructure, it also includes a theme park, a yachting club, hotels and hospitals.

The movie complex will also establish exclusive subsidiaries to attract high-quality film and TV products from both home and abroad to the metropolis.

"The launching of the movie metropolis will promote the industrialization of the country's content production in the film segment," said Xiao Yanyan, senior analyst of media and internet at CITIC Securities.

"The move will also drive the improvement of China's box-office performance from the source as high-quality content is the main growth engine of the Chinese box office."

Xiao said that the country has a lot to do in film compared with the US, where the film industry is very mature and highly-developed.

"However, in the mid and long-term, Chinese films still have great potential. The recent surge at the box office showed that more superior domestic films are being offered and that the production cycle has been improved," he added.

China's box office rose again after years of breakneck growth. In 2017, a total of 798 domestic films, 32 animated films and 44 documentaries were produced.

[email protected]

(China Daily 05/02/2018 page13)