ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the global film industry by focusing on North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific and Latin America in terms of the box office, numbers of cinema screens, and numbers of films produced. Based on the view that visual pleasure is the essential nature of film, this chapter analyzes the important role and significance of visual pleasure in the entertainment industry and for audiences’ viewing experience of spectacle films of science fiction and other genres that used many CGI (computer-generated images) and special effects. Driven by the emerging regional film markets, such as China and other Asian film markets, the global film market has maintained a steady growth in recent years. Despite the dominance of American movies in the global film market, the development of the national film industry in many countries demonstrates strong vitality. In Asian countries, such as China, India, Japan and South Korea, the market shares of domestic movies have even maintained a competitive advantage over Hollywood movies. With the Chinese film industry’s rapid growth rate for many years, the Chinese film market is growing significantly and catching up with the domestic film market of the United States in terms of box office figures and number of screens. The two countries, China and the US, are jointly leading the global film market. Hence the “G2 pattern” has become more apparent.
