The saga over murky box office numbers in Taiwan continues. On Aug. 12, 2016, a public hearing held between the Ministry of Culture, representatives and other personnel from the film industry concluded with all sides agreeing to maintain Taiwan’s current box office reporting system. However, statistics are to be transferred to the Taiwan Film Institute and will only be made available daily to people in the film industry. Those wishing to view the numbers are required to register with the Taiwan Film Institute and will receive the information before noon each day.
Read more: Box Office Transparency: Still a Problem in Taiwan
After consulting the local film industry and referencing the reporting systems of other countries, the Taiwan Film Institute began providing daily statistics to registered members on Dec. 26, 2016 and released its first box office report (currently only available in Mandarin) for November 2016 to the public on Jan. 5.
This was meant to be a big step in improving Taiwan’s box office transparency, however, some critics have said the public report is too vague and lacks information. Film critic Cheng Bing-hung (鄭秉泓) says in a United Daily News opinion piece, though the total box office revenue for each film is provided in the report, it fails to show the weekly growth or decline of the films. Another example is the report only shows the number of theaters a movie is released in but does not show how many halls in a single theater a film was screened.
The film critic also points out that the daily statistics provided for registered members are only for films a member is directly involved with. A member can not receive information for other movies, so it is difficult for film companies to improve or strengthen their marketing strategies.
But the biggest problem is still the credibility of the box office numbers provided in the reports. The current system relies on each theater reporting their own statistics — even though The Enforcement Rules of the Motion Picture Act was amended in 2015 to avoid false promotion and boost the transparency of box office reports.
In the past, Taipei was the only part of Taiwan that collected box office statistics, and an estimate country total was calculated by doubling the numbers for Taipei. The lack of accurate box office reports gave room for multiple film distributors to make concurrent claims to having “a No. 1 film at the box office."
Many smaller theaters outside Taipei operate under tight budgets and have difficulty estimating future audience numbers. Rather than splitting the box office revenue with distributors, local theaters often have agreements with distributors to purchase the full rights to show major blockbusters, which means they are free to collect the entire box office revenue.
Though the numbers of the report remain questionable, it does shed light on some of the trends in Taiwan’s current consumption of films. The News Lens created an infographic (see below) based on the statistics which shows results such as U.S. films taking up more than 90 percent of ticket sales and film review ratings not influencing ticket sales in Taiwan.
Editor: Edward White
