Netizens are having a growing influence on what makes it to the big screen. Xu Fan reports.
When filmmaker Li Shaohong watched the premiere of the animated movie The Legend of Qin, she was startled to see "numerous reviews suddenly flying onto the screen".
In the course of the China Film Director Guild chairwoman's 30-year career, it was the first time she had seen a film premiered in that way. Moviegoers were able to post real-time comments on the giant screen using mobile devices connected to the local wireless network.
Known in Chinese as "danmu", or "bullet screen", the unlikely movie-watching model originated in Japan and has recently gained popularity among young people in China.
Two major "bullet-screen" video-streaming sites, Bilibili.com and Acfun.com, have accumulated millions of registered users, who regard watching a film more like a social-networking game than an artistic experience.
"It opens the door to a new world. The rising interactive trend will also affect the scriptwriters, as they will read the comments and reconstruct the plotline in sequels to cater to viewers," says Li, at a Shanghai International Film Festival forum on the scriptwriters' challenges in an era dominated by Internet.
During the recently concluded festival, which is regarded as a trend indicator, Internet giants appear to have spread their tentacles to every corner of the fast-expanding Chinese movie industry, which has earned nearly 15 billion yuan ($2.42 billion) in the first half of 2015.
Even scriptwriters are realizing that they have to move with the changing cinema landscape.
Zhang Ting, a famed scriptwriter behind the historic epic Mulan, says more online novelists have become movie and TV drama writers, and a large number of hit Web novels are being adapted into screen productions.
"Almost all the CEOs of the major film studios are reading popular online novels every day," says Zhang, a winner of the Xia Yan Movie Literature Awards, one of the highest honors for screenplay authors.
"I have booked some traditional literature magazines, but the stories that qualified to be adapted to movies are very rare," Zhang says. "Most of the popular Web novels, which are followed by fans and changed according to their requests, have attractive storylines, but the writing may be poor."
Zhang says it is not difficult to become an online novelist, and the nature of online literature is "emotional".
"Consider some of the foreign classics. They may be badly translated but they still lure Chinese readers, as the sentimental parts are beyond language," he says.
Online novels refer to works that are uploaded for free to popular literature websites or forums. When some of them become Internet sensations, they will be bought by publishing houses or even major entertainment companies.
The latest available figures show that the 50 most-read online novels listed by China's search engine giant Baidu have all been purchased by film studios, with the most expensive sold at an adaptation price of more than 10 million yuan, according to domestic media reports.
While the privately owned entertainment giant Enlight Media has arranged several employees to search for good tales online, another giant LeTV has established an eight-person team with the sole task of hunting for novels that can be adapted for the screen.
The Ghouls, a best-selling novel collection featuring the adventures of several tomb robbers, was split into two parts, with four books bought by China Film Group Corp and another four bought by Wanda Group.
"If an online work is read more than 1 million times, it has the market potential to be turned into a screen production," says Su Jian, a veteran scriptwriter.
"But only one or two novels in 10 will finally get on TV or into theaters. The most popular themes revolve around coming-of-age romances."
Research by China Internet Network Information Center finds nearly 80 percent of online-novel readers are interested in watching TV dramas or movies inspired by Web sensations.
Last year, up to 114 online novels were bought to be adapted for screen productions, including 90 for TV series and 24 scheduled to turn into movies.
Even that cannot ease the huge thirst for scripts. Other sensational productions, from a hit song to a pop variety show, have lured market-oriented filmmakers, if they have gone viral online.
Forever Young, a film inspired by the hit song released by He Jiong in 2004, will hit mainland theaters in early July.
"One of my major investors decided to commit money when he heard the name of the song, even without reading the script. He said it reminded him of a university classmate whom he had lost contact with for years," reveals the movie's producer, Peng Yu.