Aftershock: First Chinese IMAX Film Launch 🎬

The first Chinese film to play on Imax screens opens today in China, marking the latest move by Hollywood to seek a role in one of the world's fastest-growing movie markets.

"Aftershock," with a budget of more than $20 million (considered high by Chinese standards), from director Feng Xiaogang, is playing on more than a dozen of Imax's giant screens across China and Hong Kong.

Imax Corp. partnered with the Huayi Brothers, the film's producer, for its first commercial movie produced outside of the U.S. It's the first of three Chinese-language films that Imax and Huayi plan to release, in a deal that was announced last year. Imax says it is continuing talks with Huayi on the next two films but that nothing has yet been announced.

While Imax isn't new to China — "Avatar," for instance, was a hit on Imax screens earlier this year — "Aftershock" represents Imax's first non-Hollywood major studio film. Imax has been expanding in China, announcing several deals this year with Chinese partners to increase the number of Imax screens in the country. It expects to have 57 in operation by 2012.

Hollywood is eager to tap into the growing movie industry in China, where the country's box office jumped 86% to 4.84 billion yuan ($714.2 million) in the first half of this year compared with a year earlier, according to a report this week from the state-run Xinhua news agency.

As China's home-grown commercial film business continues to mature, Feng says that having Imax's support is a "strong and powerful" advancement for the country's movie industry. "I am very glad and grateful that Imax chose 'Aftershock' as its first non-Hollywood Imax film."

"Aftershock" is tear-jerker about a family torn apart by the 1976 Tangshan earthquake, killing about a quarter of a million people, and reuniting decades later in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake that left more than 85,000 dead or missing.

Feng is China's most commercially successful director with a string of domestic hits and possessing a Spielberg-like quality of flourishing in all types of genres.