"Hand-written tickets" for the Spring Festival have been repeatedly banned, and not only small town theaters have stolen Stephen Chow's box office?

During the Spring Festival, the film market is booming, especially driven by the trend of returning home, and small town theaters have become the main box office force. However, the reporter's investigation found that during this period,"box office theft" was particularly rampant in third-and fourth-tier cities.

At the beginning of 2017, Yu Dong, president of Bona Films, publicly criticized box office theft."Last year, box office revenue of China films exceeded 50 billion yuan. At least 20% of the box office was not counted. Box office theft is the black hole of China films."

In fact, the regulatory authorities are also constantly improving the regulatory mechanism. However, as of now, there is still no effective regulatory measure. Liu Jianfeng, director of the public affairs department of Poly Pictures, said in an interview with reporters that stealing box office will seriously harm the interests of all parties in the industry chain and will inevitably affect the development of the industry. Legislation is imminent.

Box office thieves have repeatedly banned

Mr. Ren, who is not only working in Beijing, from returning to his hometown for the New Year. He planned to watch "Make a fuss in Tianzhu" on the first day of the Chinese New Year, but he did not expect to encounter a "ticket collision" situation at Huaying Studios in Shouguang City, Shandong Province.

"I bought the ticket on the Cat's Eye ticketing platform, but when I was watching a movie, I found that someone had bought a ticket for the same seat." Mr. Ren told reporters that in addition to the "ticket collision", he also experienced "being" refunded "that day." The other two movie tickets I purchased on Cat's Eye were automatically refunded for some reason after successfully selecting seats and completing payment."

A person familiar with the ticketing platform told reporters that this situation may be that local theaters "sell two tickets for one ticket", which is one of the methods used by theaters to steal the box office."Because after the sold tickets are refunded, the box office will not be credited to the special funds. If the seat is sold twice, this part of the expenses can be included in the theater's own pocket."

What's even more exaggerated is that some theaters even appeared with handwritten movie tickets. Mr. Nie, who works in Hangzhou, told reporters that on the afternoon of New Year's Day, he planned to go to his hometown of Zhuhe Jiaxing Film City in Jianli County, Hubei Province to watch a movie."I bought tickets for" Journey to the West "at the counter. She (the theater staff) took a piece of paper for the movie ticket and then wrote the seat number by hand. I asked her why it was written by hand. She said,'Tickets are too tight during the New Year.' This is my first time watching a movie in my hometown. I think the movie theater looks very informal. Not only do I write the movie tickets by hand, but I also have to buy my own 3D glasses."

Behind a movie ticket, there will be multiple forces participating in the sharing of accounts. An analyst who declined to be named said in an interview with reporters that generally, 5% of box office revenue is special funds for movies, 3.3% is business tax, paid by cinemas, and the remaining 91.7% is called net box office. The net box office is divided among producers, distributors, theaters, and theaters. For domestic films, cinemas and theaters can retain 57%, agent distributors can get 1%-3% of the fee, and the remaining 40%-42% goes to the film producers and distributors."In other words, if the movie theater steals the box office, then there is no need to pay other three parties 'fees, and even saves the special funds and business tax for the movie, and gets 100% of the revenue. Corresponding to this, the profits of the film were damaged. If calculated based on the average ticket price of 39.5 yuan/ticket, the producer and distributor will lose at least 14.5 yuan for every handwritten ticket for "Journey to the West"."

Regulatory loopholes need to be solved urgently

. Under the temptation of huge profits, many small cinemas have chosen to take risks. Bona Films once made a rough statistic. There are at least 100 theaters across the country with annual box office of less than 30,000 yuan. Yu Dong believes that these theaters mainly survive by stealing box office."Some box office statistics are not available, especially newly opened theaters, which are the hardest hit by box office theft. This year, more than 9000 screens have been added across the country, most of which are newly opened theaters. Newly opened theaters have pressure on rent, and it is difficult for third-and fourth-tier cities to supervise box office theft."

Many cinemas in small cities are invested by individuals. In order to maximize profits, some irregular behaviors are prone to occur. Liu Jianfeng told reporters that the current industry management method is single and can only rely on spot checks by local radio, television and film bureau personnel and industry self-discipline. "However, many small cities do not even have radio and television bureaus, or the functions of the radio and television bureaus are imperfect, resulting in almost a blank state in the country's supervision of 'small town cinemas."

On the other hand, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television has also been continuously improving the ticketing system. According to the reporter's understanding, in early 2015, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television launched a regulatory U-Shield, hoping to strengthen monitoring; in early 2016, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television also launched the "Implementation Plan for Carrying out Special Governance Activities on Film Market Order", which detailed 26 violations and penalties.

However, the effect of the above measures is not ideal. Liu Jianfeng told reporters: "On the one hand, supervision is weak, and third-party ticketing websites have not yet sunk into theaters in fourth-and fifth-tier towns, resulting in a general mentality of getting lucky among cinemas; on the other hand, the industry supervision system is lacking, and employees are unaware of the seriousness of box office theft. Everyone knows that tax evasion is an illegal act, but they never thought that stealing box office is an illegal act. In fact, my country has no corresponding laws to restrict this behavior. Legislation is an urgent matter at the moment."

Editor: yvette