"The agreement between China and the US was breaking news for even the insiders and film officials," he recalled. "We had to confront the challenges on short notice. We were indeed worried."
The impact of Hollywood films was instant. Geng Yuejin, a senior distributor, said that the share of revenue by domestic films in the first half of 2012 was only around 32 percent.
A number of local productions contributed significantly to the box office in the following six months, however, such as the fantasy film Painted Skin 2 and the small budget comedy Lost in Thailand.
Lost in Thailand, made for 25 million yuan, grossed nearly 1.2 billion yuan. According to the film bureau, 36 million tickets were sold, more than those of Avatar and Transformers 3.
Painted Skin 2, with ravishing visual effects, secured sales of 700 million yuan.
But the fact that the two films made up one-fourth of domestic films' total revenue is not a sustainable path for the industry's sound development, according to some analysts.
"If we put those two films aside we will find very few domestic films can really compete with Hollywood blockbusters, either in story or technology," said independent box office analyst Wu Panpan.
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