MPAA says Chinese box office receipts reached new record: $2.75B in 2012
Despite massive piracy, China builds theaters like crazy: 10 new screens daily.
We often hear from the MPAA and other intellectual property rights holders about how much they’re suffering as a result of piracy.
But on Friday, Christopher Dodd, the current head of the movie industry group and a former senator from Connecticut, argued (PDF) before a luncheon at the National Press Club that “movies matter,” and that the TV and film industries have created millions of jobs around America as a result.
The real coup de grâce, though, was when he said that 2012 “was a great year for the film industry,” as combined international box office receipts outside the United States and Canada reached $23.1 billion in 2012, “up nearly a billion dollars compared to the previous year.”
Most surprising was a comment from Dodd affirming that American films in cinemas are huge in China, which for years has been an international pariah for widespread intellectual property violations. The country, after all, is continually named by American authorities and entertainment industry representatives as being guilty of staggering levels of international piracy. Anyone who has traveled to China can attest to the vast number of pirated DVDs that are readily available, to say nothing of pirated material available online.
Still, it’s notable that despite high levels of piracy, Chinese consumers appear to be willing to pay for movie tickets. The MPAA’s head told the assembled crowd that there are now over 11,000 cinema screens in China, which is expected to double by 2015.
“Chinese box office receipts grew a staggering 31 percent—to about $2.75 billion—making China the second largest international market behind Japan,” Dodd added.
He went on to point out that the American film and TV industries made $14.2 billion in exports, adding that “no other major American industry has a balance of trade as positive in every nation on the globe in which it does business as the American film industry.”
The former senator closed by saying that Silicon Valley and Hollywood should “innovate our way through these challenges,” because “consumers deserve to enjoy first-generation versions of their favorite films—not secondhand, pirated films-of-films shot and recorded inside a movie theater on a mobile phone.”
“We must strike a balance between the desire for a free and open Internet and the protection of intellectual property,” Dodd concluded. “The future cannot be about choosing one over the other—between protecting free speech or protecting intellectual property—it must be about protecting both. We can and must have an Internet that works for everyone, and we can and must have protection for the creative industry’s genius that intellectual property represents.”
But on Friday, Christopher Dodd, the current head of the movie industry group and a former senator from Connecticut, argued (PDF) before a luncheon at the National Press Club that “movies matter,” and that the TV and film industries have created millions of jobs around America as a result.
The real coup de grâce, though, was when he said that 2012 “was a great year for the film industry,” as combined international box office receipts outside the United States and Canada reached $23.1 billion in 2012, “up nearly a billion dollars compared to the previous year.”
Most surprising was a comment from Dodd affirming that American films in cinemas are huge in China, which for years has been an international pariah for widespread intellectual property violations. The country, after all, is continually named by American authorities and entertainment industry representatives as being guilty of staggering levels of international piracy. Anyone who has traveled to China can attest to the vast number of pirated DVDs that are readily available, to say nothing of pirated material available online.
Still, it’s notable that despite high levels of piracy, Chinese consumers appear to be willing to pay for movie tickets. The MPAA’s head told the assembled crowd that there are now over 11,000 cinema screens in China, which is expected to double by 2015.
“Chinese box office receipts grew a staggering 31 percent—to about $2.75 billion—making China the second largest international market behind Japan,” Dodd added.
He went on to point out that the American film and TV industries made $14.2 billion in exports, adding that “no other major American industry has a balance of trade as positive in every nation on the globe in which it does business as the American film industry.”
The former senator closed by saying that Silicon Valley and Hollywood should “innovate our way through these challenges,” because “consumers deserve to enjoy first-generation versions of their favorite films—not secondhand, pirated films-of-films shot and recorded inside a movie theater on a mobile phone.”
“We must strike a balance between the desire for a free and open Internet and the protection of intellectual property,” Dodd concluded. “The future cannot be about choosing one over the other—between protecting free speech or protecting intellectual property—it must be about protecting both. We can and must have an Internet that works for everyone, and we can and must have protection for the creative industry’s genius that intellectual property represents.”
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