Cinema scams

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A similar scheme was employed when Transformers 3 was bundled with Yang Shanzhou, a very small film with little box-office potential, making the latter into a strange film with eye-popping revenue (79 million yuan) but disproportionately fewer people who actually bothered to see it. There were sporadic online complaints about the practice even though consumers did not pay more for the package deal.

The State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television, the regulating agency, announced measures in late January to curb under-reporting and cheating on box-office revenues. A special fund is set up to subsidize the upgrading of computer software at point of sale. The current system was installed in 2005 and "cannot keep up with the new situation", in the words of Jiang Tao, director of the fund. "The new system will fix loopholes and shorten the reporting window to only 10 minutes after a sale is made instead of waiting till next noon, which is the current reporting lapse in time, which leaves room for manipulation. The national platform will be ready by May and the cinema side will complete their upgrading by October."

Apart from putting a stamp of authorization on all sales systems, SAPPRFT insists that all film tickets carry correct prices and movie admission. But conspicuously absent are concrete penalties for violations. The software upgrade will certainly be a great help, admit distributors and exhibitors, but it may not be enough.

"The cost of violation is still too low. If you're caught under-reporting 10 tickets, all you need to do is make up for the shortfall," says Huang Ziyan, vice-president of Le Vision Pictures in charge of sales.

Cao Yong, a manager with the Huaxing UME cinema chain, suggests that violators should have their business license revoked. "Cinemas invest tens of millions of yuan and, with punishment of this severity, it would not make sense for them to steal 80,000 or 100,000 yuan from the box office."

Other ideas have been floated such as the use of an infra-red camera that automatically scans a movie theater for attendance. The technology has been available for eight or nine years and it claims to have 95 percent accuracy. But it has never been put into use.

Filmmakers are reluctant to stand firm when they become victims because they do not want to offend the exhibition branch of the business chain - the branch that deals directly with end users. Some say they are no longer sad at the irregularity, but have come to the stage of despair.

This time it's for real, and "we'll cleanse the industry of this illegal and irregular behavior", says Zhang Hongsen, director of SAPPRFT's Film Bureau.

Related stories:

New measures tackle box-office fraud

China's 2013 box office nears 21.8 bln yuan

Top 10 box office hits in 2013

For more stories by Raymond Zhou, click here

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