China's cinemas are expected to rake in three billion yuan (US$400 million) in box office revenue in 2007, as more cinemas opened and more domestic films were able to compete with imported blockbusters.

Chinese movie theaters saw 1.2 billion yuan in box office revenue in the first half of 2007, a figure that does not include the busy summer season, local media reported on Thursday. China reported two billion yuan in box office revenue in 2005 and 2.6 billion yuan in 2006.

As more urban Chinese are drawn to the cinema, 100 new cinemas with more than 700 screens have been opened so far this year, the Beijing News said.

Since the beginning of this year, many domestic movies have become box office hits. Curse of the Golden Flower by Zhang Yimou and two other Chinese films, Confession of Pain, and Protégé, garnered approximately 400 million yuan in total.

At the same time, foreign blockbusters like Spiderman 3, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, Transformers, and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix also gained popularity among Chinese fans, each earning more than 100 million yuan.

The competition will turn fiercer later this year, as director Ang Lee's Lust, Caution, and Jiang Wen's The Sun Also Rises, both candidates for the Golden Lion Award at this year's Venice Film Festival, will be screened in late September on the Chinese mainland.

Feng Xiaogang's Assembly and Hong Kong director Peter Chan's The Warlords are scheduled for release in December.
 
(Xinhua News Agency August 24, 2007)