(Photo : US Movie Iron Man 3)

From January to August of this year, China's box office receipts have already reached CNY15 billion or $2.4 billion in US currency, and the country's State Film Bureau said the country's total revenue for 2013 is expected to hit CNY20 billion, or $3.2 billion.

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According to Luan Guozhi, the vice-president of the State Film Bureau, China's box office receipts for the past eight months of this year have already surpassed the CNY17 billion ($2.7 billion) revenue of the entire 2011.

Luan, who addressed a keynote forum at the 17th Beijing Screenings, a forum that aims to promote cooperation and understanding between Chinese and international movie makers, however, noted that Chinese films failed to impress international audience.

International Revenue Drops

He said no Chinese film that were distributed internationally in 2012 made revenue of more than CNY100 million ($16.33 million). Among the reason for the drop in overseas revenue, he said, was that many Chinese films failed to deliver universal values, thus the failure to attract a global audience.

Box office revenues overseas also failed to reach the expected CNY3 billion ($490 million) gross receipts. According to a report by Beijing Normal University, overseas receipts only reached CNY1.06 billion ($173 million) for the entire 2012.

China is the world's second largest film market next to the US, which earned box office revenues of $10.8 billion in 2012. Experts, however, said China is an important market for international films because the Chinese market has been continuously growing.

Foreign Investors Capitalize On Growing Film Market

The growth of the Chinese market started when the government opened its theaters to foreign films after years of showing purely Chinese-screened movies.

Driven by the growing Chinese market, international movie houses have started investing in the country. Last July, IMAX Corp of Canada and China's Wanda Cinema Line Corp has agreed to put up as many as 120 new movie houses in China together.

Their agreement calls for IMAX to add from 40 to 120 theaters in mainland China, bringing to 381 the number of IMAX movie houses in operation there or those included in a plan for launching. Wanda will operate at most 210 of these theaters.