World's largest film screen poised to impress Chinese audience

Moviegoers queue up to buy tickets at a cinema in Beijing, February 9, 2014. [Photo/IC]

HEFEI - A Chinese company has developed an extra-large film screen, measuring 100 by 25 meters.

The manufacturer, Star Screen Co Ltd in East China's Anhui province, spent two years developing the 1.6-ton screen, which has been recognized as the world's largest by the science and technology committee of the state film administration.

The company overcame several technical difficulties in screen evenness, spraying and transportation.

Some technical specifications of the final product are even better than the national standard, said Yang Xuepei, deputy director of the committee.

"Take polarization ratio for example: a higher ratio means a better 3D effect, while a substandard screen brings viewers sore eyes and dizziness," said Yang.

Eight orders from cinemas and movie theme parks have been placed for the screen, and the company is expecting more orders after the official launch.

Over 3,300 new cinemas opened across the country over the past five years, with the number of screens soaring to 31,000, said Lin Minjie, general manager of China Film Equipment Company.

The new screen will be made to fit the China Film Giant Screen (CGS), a large format film system jointly developed by the China Film Company and China Research Institute of Film Science and Technology.

Launched in 2011, the CGS has become one of the fastest-growing high-end digital movie exhibition systems in the world, according to Lin. Of the 350 giant screens available in China, 133 have adopted the CGS system.

"CGS has been exported to the United States, India, Indonesia, Thailand and will soon enter the European market including France and Russia," Lin said.

China's box office sales in 2015 hit 44 billion yuan ($6.75 billion), up 48.7 percent from 2014 and a whopping 235.9 percent from 2011.

Monthly ticket sales in February reached 6.87 billion yuan, overtaking that of North America for the first time, official data showed.

Last year alone, 8,000 new screens were installed nationwide, with 6,700, or 80 percent of them, produced by Star Screen.

"Alongside the breathtaking growth of box office sales, China's own film equipment industry is also booming," Lin said. "More film projectors, servers, screens and sound equipment with independent proprietary intellectual property rights are made in China."