Business Opportunities in the China Market - Talents and Talent Management

Sep 25, 2025 CFM Daily, Don't Miss, Pitch, Production 0

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Tony Leung Ka Fai has won Hong Kong Film Awards for four times since the 1980s, one for each decade.

By Xu Jia

China needs more acting talents and its talent management business also has huge potential.

Typecasting: As China’s genre films keep developing, there will be a need for more typecasting. Established images include Amber Kuo as a romantic sweetheart (Au revoir Taipei, Paris Holiday), Yang Zishan as the girl next door (Miss Granny, So Young), Zhou Dongyu as the innocent girl (My Old Classmate, Under the Hawthorn Tree), Liu Yifei as a dreamy fairy (The Condor Heroes, The Story of a Noble Family), Kelly Lin as a sexy mystery (Mad Detective, Sparrow), Jiang Wen as a macho leader (Let The Bullets Fly, Devils on the Doorstep), Ge You as a cynical wisecracker (Personal Tailor, Big Shot’s Funeral), Wang Baoqiang as a comic dumb-bell (A World Without Thieves, Lost in Thailand), Zhang Hanyu as the tough guy (The Taking of Tiger Mountain, The Assembly), Feng Yuanzheng as a psychopath (Ten Minutes Older), Xiao Shenyang as a comic sidekick (The Grandmaster, Jian Bing Man) and so on. However, a new array of actors and actresses who are capable of acting is needed, as China now produces over 600 films per year. There is especially a shortage of young kung fu actors.

The language issue: People still remember at a press conference, Maggie Cheung answered in English, French, Mandarin and Cantonese to questions raised by journalists from different regions. Bilingual or multi-lingual actors and actresses naturally have more options in roles, for instance, Joan Chen, Daniel Wu and Zhu Zhu, etc.

It is noticeable that a wave of talents have rising from Taiwan, including Sandrine Pinna, Rhydian Vaughan, Bea Hayden and Vivian Dawson, all born bilingual, so to speak. Young actor Michael Stephen Kai Sui also has an impressive portfolio. Celebrities’ kids like Noé Liu and Kyana Poppy Downs are likely to act in films after becoming household names in the reality show Dad, Where Are We Going? Their distinctive faces make them stand out.

Actor Jonathan Kos-Read, with a Chinese name Cao Cao, has stayed in China for over a decade and speaks perfect Chinese. As real co-productions increases, foreign talents are likely to take bigger roles. The next decade will witness a growing trend of foreign actors coming to work in China.

Talent agents: The most urgent issue agents face is they need to find younger talents – honestly, not so many current players can act well. They are stars, but in terms of cinematic art, rather than box office alone, they need time to digest their characters, in order to present stunning performances. The thing is, most are keener on making more commercials and attending reality shows – reality show has been an easy income source – some can get over 750,000 USD per day.

Unlike the general practice, Chinese production companies can have their own talent management branch. In the earlier days, a galaxy of movie stars was affiliated with top local private studios. But when they got bigger, they tended to leave the company and built their own company to have more control of their schedule, better options and to maximize profit.

It is remarkable that teen pop band TF Boys have received so much attention that they are invited by different directors to act. From singing to acting, there are also a number of legal cases: Some of China’s present superstars were nurtured by South Korea’s S. M. Entertainment, but chose to breach their contract and came back to China, mainly to act.

Also, it is not unusual to see Chinese actresses use their sister or in-laws to be their agents, somewhat like a family business.

As the China market develops, talent agents need to be more professional and international. Chinese talents want to be featured in Hollywood movies, whilst foreign talents will find this market too big to ignore. To mix and match is only the beginning.

 

 

- This article was published on The Chinese Film Market TIFF 2015 issue.

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