Chinese star Fan Bingbing goes missing after falling foul of authorities

Fan Bingbing is one of stars biggest in Chinese movie industry. Up to the time a few months ago, she still have a very bright future. The actress starred in several Hollywood superhero megahits. She also scored of local movies and drama, with a lot of other activities in the line.

But in last June, she became involved in a big scandal about the stars under-disclosing their earnings. As a result, China's tax authorities have investigated the industry, including Fan Bingbing, for practical evasion. Since then, Fan Bingbing, who possesses 63 million followers on Weibo, has disappeared from public sight. No more SNS updates, no more photographer pictures and no more public participation! She's denied the scandal. However, journalists couldn't reach the representative of her studio for statement.

For movie executives, the disappearance of Fan Bingbing  is a prompt of the risks of business in the most-organized big entertainment market all over the world. In that world, the Communist Party joins in just on everything from the costumes' appropriateness to all the stars' salaries. The scene is also causing Chinese studios to detach a confidence on A-list stars to make big hits.

Leiger Yang is founding partner at Beijing-based Landmark Capital. This company invests in entertainment start-ups and studios. He said: “The restraint will force all studios to devote effort to making value content instead of simply depending on the star-compelled formula”.

Fan Bingbing disappeared from public sight just one day before the State Administration of Taxation reported a probe into her tax filings. It occurred after a former China Central Television MC posted what seemed to be incompletely redacted deals that supposedly disguised rectification Fan Bingbing gained from a studio for a movie. Several weeks after that, the MC said the deals weren’t have connection with the star.

Stanley Rosen, a political science professor at University of Southern California, has studied China and its movie industry. The professor talked about Fan Bingbing’s silence: “As you know, SNS and public opinion are influential drivers of tactics in this country. Especially, when talking about perceived prejudice, the super-rich but cheating stars become more important”. However, Stanley Rosen thinks Chinese government won’t deepen its crackdown in a direction that harms its industry longer phrase.

Authorities might not directly erode bankable actors. However, the industry trends disclose that stellar casts are not any more sure bets. TV streaming is also fulling fans to films without big stars. China’s Netflix and iQiyi's drama tittled “Story of Yanxi Palace” arose as a unexpected summer huge hit with an almost young, lesser-famous cast. According to iQiyi, viewes has streamed for “Story of Yanxi Palace” more than 15 billion times, .

iQiyi CEO Gong Yu said: “The success of “Story of Yanxi Palace” drives a new changing point and also new lucky chances to this industry, where excessive compensation for stars has pressured for a long time”. He added: ‘Our industry should halt overcompensating stars in low-status productions just seeing that they own huge fandoms”.

His streaming platform was in the middle of a group of TV companies and films. That reality distributed a joint declaration on August 10th. They said that they would cooperate to oppose overpaying elite talent. They also devote more moneys to produce better films.

Additionally, this'll lead to a decline in shoddy works. It'll also give China's movie industry an chance to devote effort to film's quality. A professor of film and TV studies at Tsinghua University named Yin Hong said that in a recent interview.

Barely about 800 in half movies made by China's studios in 2017 or so could make it to a cinema. But less than one fourth of those 400 films sold slightly 100 million yuan (about 14.5 million USD) in sales. That happened in a market where the beginning for a hit movie is considered about 1 billion yuan in tickets. Yin Hong said: “The industry is going by so much pain right now. However, if dealt perfectly, it'll be a excellent opportunity.”