Latest update October 21st, 2015 12:41 PM
How MONSTER HUNT Topped the Summer Box Office?
By Hua Yang
MONSTER HUNT is hailed as a triumph of VFX among the local films.
The movie revolves around baby monster Huba, who was hunted by the monster-hating humans and went on an adventure with his “father” and a female monster hunter.
With Kong Fu, animation and funny moments, the film stands out with a cute baby monster that can easily touch the students and females, which account for more than half of the moviegoers.
MONSTER HUNT was crowned king of China’s box office in the summer of 2015 when the 3D live action-animated movie surpassed LOST IN THAILAND as the all-time highest grossing Chinese film, only 10 days after its opening.
MONSTER HUNT tallied a gross of 2.25 billion yuan ($352 million) as of August 19, 2015. It set a number of records for a Chinese film, including the biggest domestic opening of all time ($280 million), usurping 2014’s THE MONKEY KING, the largest local single day ever ($310 million) as well as the fastest local film to reach 1 billion yuan ($161 million), which it did in just 8 days.
The booming local market
Apparently, MONSTER HUNT owes some of its success to China’s market expansion. Since the surprise hit LOST IN THAILAND in 2012, the box office revenue in China have almost doubled. In 2012, the overall box office was only 17.7 billion yuan ($2.85 billion), but in 2014, the figure became 29.7 billion yuan ($4.78 billion), with a year-on-year growth of 36 percent.
The film industry has been cheering for more magic numbers. China’s box-office in the first half of 2015 has already achieved $3.28 billion, surging 50 percent from a year earlier. February in 2015, the Chinese New Year season, was the first month ever where China’s box office out-paced the US by $10 million. And the number of screens in China has hit 28,000 by the end of June 2015, meaning an average of 28 new cinema screens were added every day.
Few foreign films distributed in the summer
Chinese films have a better shot at box office in July as the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television (SAPPRFT) has made July the “domestic film protection month”.
There was only one imported film that was released in the same week, Shaun the Sheep Movie. But it still faced stiff competition from two highly praised domestic films. MONKEY KING: HERO IS BACK, a 3D animated take on JOURNEY TO THE WEST, hit the theater on July 10 (Friday), six days earlier than MONSTER HUNT, while JIAN BING MAN was one day later.
The three films altogether created a spectacular scene at China’s box office: MONKEY KING: HERO IS BACK became China’s new animation champ with a gross of 915 million yuan ($143 million) as of August 19, and JIAN BING MAN made a massive 1.15 billion yuan ($180 million).
Among the three, MONSTER HUNT looks more like a Hollywood blockbuster. It was produced by Bill Kong, the one behind Ang Lee’s CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON and was directed by Ramen Hui, who co-directed SHREK THE THIRD.
3D films are always faster to make money than 2D films. In China, the average price of a 2D film is around 70 yuan ($11) while a 3D film is about 110 yuan ($18). MONSTER HUNT was shown on over 30 percent of the screens in China.
Survived a production nightmare
The production was once halted in August 2014.
The movie had finished shooting in 2013 and the special effects was almost done by July 2014, scheduled to release during the 2015 Chinese New Year season.
Then all of a sudden, leading actor Ko Chen-tung got involved in a drug scandal and was soon banned from appearing on the big screen – any Chinese actor with a history of drug use is not allowed to be put on TV and films, unless he or she has really solid guanxi.
It was a huge blow to MONSTER HUNT. In order not to affect the quality of the film, Kong decided to re-shoot it with a new leading actor. Jing Boran, known for winning the first place in the 2007 MY HERO contest, assumed this big task.
Therefore, cleared for a budget of 200 million yuan ($31 million), the film’s production cost soared to 350 million yuan ($55 million) when the film was delivered.
The audiences are amazed to find that Jing Boran has completed this mission beautifully. Jing thus rises to a top actor.
Convincing VFX
MONSTER HUNT mixes live action and 3D animation. A group of cute monsters, including a baby monster named Huba, were created with CGI.
Most of the visual effects were handled by the Beijing-based Base FX, which has collected three Emmys and partnered with Industrial Light & Magic. This daunting task was supervised by Jason H. Snel (STAR WARS: EPISODE III) and producer Ellen Poon (JURASSIC PARK).
Christopher Bremble, Founder and CEO of Base-FX, told THE CHINESE FILM MARKET that in the earlier days, they were a lot of “Is this possible?”
“I was always honest that this was going to be a very difficult and challenging project for this company. Our approach was to let Bill understand what the challenges would be and where we would struggle,” he said.
In late 2011 and early 2012, BaseFX did a test, which was the monster queen interacting with the main male character Tianyin. “With the test, Bill felt comfortable moving forward, not just with Base, the visual effects company, but also with the idea that this could work,” he explained.
There are over 600 special effect shots. MONSTER HUNT used an animation team of over 300 staff in the whole process and this cost huge energy. “If we use one animator to do all the work, he or she will do it for 600 years without eating and drinking. If he or she eats, drinks and sleeps, it may cost 1000 years to finish all the work,” director Ramen Hui joked about the efforts.
Massive marketing
Nowadays, the success of a film is closely related to its marketing, especially Internet marketing, which sometimes can even become the key factor to decide whether the film will strike gold or not. In MONSTER HUNT’s case, Tencent has helped a lot.
As one of the film’s investors, Tencent Video added MONSTER HUNT to its film plan in June 2014, which has supported a slate of blockbusters, like DRAGON BLADE.
Tencent Video boasts hundreds of millions of viewers online. To promote MONSTER HUNT, the video platform has implanted the film’s information in its videos’ ads for more than half a month. Tencent news along with QQ and Wechat were also keeping pushing news about the movie.
On the other hand, the movie’s cast attended a bunch of variety shows, including the popular RUNNING MAN.
With a number of local films’ success led by MONSTER HUNT, Chinese filmmakers’ confidence has boost quite a bit in 2015. Still, before the imported film quota opened by 2017, local filmmakers have a long way to go.
- This article was published on the CFM Toronto issue.
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