Runing into its third day, the Beijing International Film Festival is providing a grand platform for the exchange of visions from China and overseas. Even though China is currently the world’s third largest movie market, its movie industry is facing the challenge posed by the shortage of creative screenwriters, which is greatly hamper its further expansion.
The shortage of good screenplays has long been a headache for China’s film industry.
Total box office revenue from 2011 was over 13 billion yuan. The first quarter of this year has already set a historic record of 3.6 billion. Yet with pots of money in their pocket, film companies and theatres are getting more and more worried about the scarcity of excellent screenplays. This is due to the fact that a system that cultivates and protects good screenwriters is absent from China’s booming movie market.
Xue Meng, a screenwriter says, "There should be a professional agency that promotes and protects planning and creative minds. We first have ideas and then we ask screenwriters to process it. This is how they grow in practice."
As a result, famous screenwriters are enjoying a bullish market. A single play could be priced at millions of yuan. But for new writers, the figure drops to only tens of thousands of yuan. This has posed a dilemma for film companies who are forced to choose between a high investment or insecurity.
Jia Leilei, an expert of China Art Research Institute says, "Hollywood commercial movies are made on an industrial line. They have a clear division and good coordination. And the line is the fruit of practice of thousands of times."
From this year on, the government will set up a prize of 30 million yuan for excellent screenplays. And a talent selecting system is expected to be built soon.