Fosun bets new tech to woo Chinese to pay up for movie

Bloomberg

Fosun Group, the Chinese conglomerate that owns Club Med and Cirque du Soleil, is betting on new technology to boost its foray into the feature film industry, backing a Studio 8 Iraq war movie to be shown at five times the standard frame rate.
Filmed at 120 frames-per-second, the $48 million “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk” is set to open Friday in five specially equipped cinemas in Beijing, Shanghai, New York, Los Angeles and Taipei.
The theaters will use 4K and
3D projection gear to bring the industry’s highest-resolution, a premium viewing experience strategy that helped the 2009 film “Avatar” become the biggest grossing movie on record.
Fosun in 2014 bought a 48 percent stake in Studio 8, founded by former Warner Bros. Pictures President Jeff Robinov. The insurance, real estate and pharmaceutical group also owns part of Bona Film Group, which co-produced and is distributing “Billy Lynn” in China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan.
“This is a cinematic revolution,” Bona Film Chief Executive Officer
Yu Dong said Nov. 6 at a briefing on the film’s planned debut. He compared the film’s potential to “Avatar’s” run in IMAX theaters, the large-format cinema that demands higher ticket prices.
Director James Cameron’s science fiction adventure “Avatar” was released at about 28,000 cinemas in China, including 12 IMAX screens. The large-format IMAX screens brought in 1.2 billion yuan of the movie’s 1.3 billion yuan in total China ticket sales, according to Yu. He said he hopes “Billy Lynn” will also bring in 100 million yuan ($15 million) per screen.
Prior to “Billy Lynn” the highest frame-rate major feature film was 2012’s “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey,” which was shot in 48 fps.