Lord of the Rings: Return of the Kings stands out as the favorite movie of Taiwanese audiences this year, following Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, which topped the movie list last year. Although the film is still showing at cinemas, it has reached NT$100 million in total ticket sales, leading all other top-selling movies which are already off screens. It is also the only movie this year to break the NT$100 million mark.
Cinema proprietors and film distributors are looking on this year as a disappointing one. Last year there was Harry Potter II, Spiderman and Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, which all broke the NT$100 million threshold. But this year, films such as X Men II, Bad Boys II and Matrix Reloaded fell short of box office expectations. Total box office takings this year have dropped by about 20 percent, said Joe Chang (
SARS and rampant piracy are the main reasons for this, Chang said and Taiwan's distributors for Hollywood films agreed. Apart from SARS, the big threat for cinema sales is still piracy, especially Internet downloading and illegal DVDs and VCDs, according to both Buena Vista Taiwan and Fox Taiwan.
In terms of movie types, films containing sci-fi elements or special effects are still the most popular. Examples of these among the top 10 foreign movies are: Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, Matrix Reloaded (No. 2), Pirates of the Caribbean, Die Another Day (No. 6), Matrix Revolutions (No. 7) and The Hulk (No. 9) and Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life.
Disney-Pixar's Finding Nemo was an exception, proving itself to be popular among both adults and children. It was the third-favorite foreign movie this year.
As for Chinese-language films, Zhang Yi-mou's (
The No.2 best-selling Chinese language movie was Johnny To's (
The attraction of pop idols such as Gigi Leung (
A real shame for local filmmakers and producers is that all top 10 Chinese-language movies are Hong Kong films. No Taiwanese films got into the top 10, including Lin Cheng-sheng's (
Tsai Ming-liang's (
So far, none of the eight Taiwanese films made this year grossed more than NT$1 million. Considering an average Taiwanese film costs NT$20 million, this year looks like a very bad one for Taiwanese movies.
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