China in their hand For the first time, box office receipts in Chinese cinemas have overtaken those in the USA. While Chinese sales in February were $646.7 million, America only sold $640 million in seats — not great, especially in the run up to the Oscars. The Chinese have pulled ahead by a whisker in the particularly busy time of Chinese New Year, but this is a sign of riches to come: according to Variety, five new cinema screens open in the country every day. Homegrown blockbusters such as Dragon Blade with Jackie Chan have dominated the box office of late, but the American robot-warrior movie Pacific Rim made more money in China than at home. Often action films that die at the Western box office find resurrection in China — Andy and Lana Wachowski’s critically panned Jupiter Ascending is doing exceptional business there, and there are hopes that last week’s flop Chappie will also go great guns in Asia.
May the force be with you? Shhhh! It’s finally happened — Secret Cinema has succumbed to the dark side. The London-based company — once famed for edgy “immersive” experiences where Hackney hipsters would stumble around in the Old Vic Tunnels before watching Gillo Pontecorvo’s Battle of Algiers — has gone super-mainstream by announcing that its next project will be a two-month engagement with the second episode in the Star Wars saga, The Empire Strikes Back. As is standard procedure with Secret Cinema events, the thematically appropriate location has yet to be announced. (Frozen wastelands, subtropical swamplands, and hazardous free-floating asteroid belts? How hard can it be?) Although, if all else fails and the papier-mâché imperial walkers don’t quite convince, they can always set the whole thing in front of a giant green screen. It worked for George Lucas.
A Kickstart for Hopper It looks like we’ll have one more chance to see Dennis Hopper on the big screen, five years after his death from cancer. The team behind his final, unfinished film, The Last Film Festival, have launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds to complete it. The film, an industry satire, stars Hopper as a ruthless Hollywood producer whose movie flop is accepted at just one film festival: a homespun, small-town affair called the O’Hi Film Festival. When Hopper died in 2010 at the age of 74, most of his scenes had been filmed. Director Linda Yellen has turned to Kickstarter, the crowdfunding website, after more conventional funding avenues came with what she describes as “unwelcome demands”. These included cutting scenes, altering the score and even changing Hopper’s voice. The hope is that the new funding will allow the filmmakers to secure the rights to footage from other films, and to pay for the special effects needed to complete the movie. Pledges start at $1, for which donors will be credited on the film’s website, but backers with deep pockets and $4,000 to spare could buy themselves dinner with Hopper’s co-star, Jacqueline Bisset.