Baida’s Iqiyi streaming website – part of the expanding ancillary market.
Matthew Alderson is an Australian lawyer who lives and works in Beijing, and a key figure for many producers trying to work in the Chinese context. As far as we are concerned, his perspective is rolled gold.
He has now published four parts to a meditation on the evolution of ancillaries in the Chinese screen industry. At the moment it seems that a mere ten percent of the income earned by a film in China comes from ancillaries, which is a collective noun for every form of revenue except cinema release. So 90% of that income comes from box office. In Hollywood, it is generally presumed that only a quarter of the income comes from box office, and three quarters of the dosh taken by a particular title comes from ancillaries.
