4 February 2000 | Life! The Straits Times

By Helmi Yusof
It's War

Film distributors are loading their big guns for some serious action this Chinese New Year weekend. Which one will emerge from the bloodbath?

BOX-OFFICE temperatures are rising as four major films with major stars -- Tokyo Raiders, 2000 AD, The Beach and Three Kings -- battle it out for audiences this holiday season.

The Chinese New Year period has always been a hotly-contested turf for cinema distributors here. This is especially so as the holidays this year stretch over the weekend to Monday.

Distributors say this is one of the few times in the year when Chinese audiences who do not usually go to the cinema make it a point to be part of a family movie-outing. Many non-Chinese would also be spending part of the long break at a movie.

For example, last year, Liang Po Po: The Movie, which opened on Feb 11, in the week before Chinese New Year, made $806,000 from its opening weekend and sneak previews. This works out to about 115,000 tickets sold. Gorgeous, starring Jackie Chan, which opened the following day, made about $600,000 during the same period.

Distributor Warner Golden Village estimates that a film that opens on a Chinese New Year weekend makes about two to three times what it would on an ordinary weekend.

The jump is due to the attendance of non-frequent movie-goers, whom the distributors are targeting this long weekend.

Ms Maria Tang, the marketing manager of Warner Golden Village, explains: "There are the movie buffs who will probably watch all four films as they are rather good. Then, there are the people who only watch movies during the holiday season, when they have a long break and want to do something special."

The companies behind each of the four biggies have their own ideas of what audiences want. For the action-mad, Warner Golden Village, the largest film distributor in Singapore, is lining up the Mandarin movie Tokyo Raiders.

It is also bringing in the MTV-styled war movie Three Kings, which it hopes will attract the segment of male audiences between the ages of 19 and 35, who will probably come with their girlfriends or wives.

Meanwhile, 20th Century Fox is touting Leonardo DiCaprio's The Beach as a "date movie" to attract the younger 16-24 crowd.

Raintree Pictures is keeping its fingers crossed that Hongkong Heavenly King Aaron Kwok and homegrown TV star James Lye will lure audiences of all ages to its millennium action flick, 2000 AD.

Receiving the most hype so far has been Tokyo Raiders.

Last Saturday afternoon, about 3,000 people flocked to Bishan Junction 8 to catch a glimpse of star Ekin Cheng.

The movie is also opening with a splash, on a record-breaking 1,000 screens in China and 200 more across Asia.

Mr Phoon Chiong Kit, 43, managing director of Golden Harvest, which produced Tokyo Raiders, said the movie was packaged for the Chinese New Year crowd.

"Tokyo Raiders is fast-paced and funny. We designed it such that we can get the whole family going to watch it," he said.

Tokyo Raiders takes the place of the traditional Jackie Chan film that comes out during the Chinese New Year because, according to Mr Phoon, Chan is "busy with other projects this year". The showdown at the box-office in 1998 saw Chan's Who Am I? coming out tops at the box-office, beating the Chow Yun Fat vehicle, The Corruptor.

Last year, however, Chan was beaten by someone closer to home: Raintree Pictures' Liang Po Po grossed the highest for the Chinese New Year holiday season at $805,484.

The Singapore movie company hopes to repeat the feat this year with 2000 AD.

Mr Daniel Yun, CEO of Raintree Pictures, is confident that 2000 AD will attract that elusive group of audiences who rarely go to the cinema, simply because of its "Singaporean appeal". He estimates the rise in cinema attendance during this peak period to be around 40 per cent.

The film, which was shot in Hongkong and Singapore at a total cost of US$6 million (S$10.2 million), has received intense publicity.

Locking horns with Golden Village, Raintree and its Hongkong co-producer Media Asia, flew in Kwok and fellow stars Daniel Wu, Gigi Choi and Andrew Lin for its gala premiere last Friday.

Kwok also made an appearance at Plaza Singapura last Saturday where 1,500 people had gathered.

Besides having star appeal and a Singaporean flavour in 2000 AD, Mr Yun is confident that the movie will beat the competition because it is a Mandarin film.

"Traditionally, Chinese films do better than English ones because family outings tend to comprise parents and grandparents who would definitely prefer to watch something in Mandarin," he said.

"They would know Aaron Kwok, James Lye and Tony Leung, but Leonardo DiCaprio would mean nothing to them."

He cited the situation last year when Liang Po Po, Gorgeous (starring Jackie Chan and Shu Qi) and The Corruptor easily overtook The Siege, which was helmed by big American stars Bruce Willis and Denzel Washington.

Distributor 20th Century Fox, however, begged to differ. Marketing manager Janice Tay said that The Beach will "definitely hold its own" because of DiCaprio's enormous appeal, "which may be even bigger than Aaron Kwok and Ekin Cheng's".

Although 20th Century Fox was not able to bring in the film's stars, it had embarked on an "intensive advertising campaign on the Internet", she said.

Besides having its own website at www.thebeachmovie.com, there are various other entertainment websites such as s-one.net.sg that carry stories on the movie.

Popular sites like asia.eonline.com, yahoo.com and mtvasia.com display the website banner of The Beach, where a click of the mouse would take the surfer to a special page for details.

Explained Ms Tay: "One of the main target groups that we are looking at is the 16-24 segment. The Internet would be the way to reach them."

Meanwhile, Ms Tang of Warner Golden Village insisted that Three Kings will attract the crowds because of its "high production values and unconventional story line".

She likened it to the cool, in-your-face Quentin Tarantino film Pulp Fiction.

So which movie will emerge the King Of The Box Office this weekend? Grosses for the opening weekend will be revealed next Tuesday while the accumulative box-office takings will only be known after each film has completed its run, which could be between three and five weeks or more.

The ultimate winner, though, may well be clearer than one thinks.

With four juicy films to pick from, it is not Aaron, Ekin, Leo or George who will gain the most. It is the Singapore audience.