On June 23, two days after the news that Disney was bringing a copyright case against Chinese animated film The Autobots, the film's director Zhuo Jianrong opened fire on Disney on Sina Weibo. In his post, Zhuo accused Disney of paying people to make fraudulent posts about his film online, which he says misled the media and led to the film's small box office.
Zhou's microblog post was a direct response to a court hearing held in Shanghai on June 21, during which Disney brought allegations of copyright infringement and unfair competition against the producers of The Autobots.
The case is mainly concerned with the similarities between characters in The Autobots and Disney's Cars franchise and the two films' extremely similar titles in Chinese. The iconic U.S. firm is asking for 4 million yuan ($601,000) in compensation.
Striking similarity
Right after the news came out, Chinese netizens came out in droves to cheer on Disney.
"When I first saw the poster for The Autobots in the theater I was really confused. How did it manage to get approved for the screen? It's really a disgrace," netizen Z-Daddaism commented on film site mtime.com.
When it premiered in July of 2015, The Autobots was widely criticized for its marketing posters, the design of which led many audiences to mistake it for the Disney hit animation Cars.
The film was critically panned. More than 94 percent of moviegoers gave the film only one star out of five on Chinese movie review site douban.com to express their discontent. While users on imdb.com directly called it a "mockbuster" and complained the plot didn't make any sense.
In response to widespread condemnation, Blue MTV, the production company for the animated film, published an open letter denying that the film was copying Disney's Cars.
"We didn't break the law," Zhuo told ent.sina.com.cn in an earlier interview. As for the poster, Zhuo argued that people mistaking it for Cars only proved that their poster had "star quality."
Fast money
While a verdict hasn't been decided yet, The Autobots is not the only plagiarism accusation China has had to deal with in recent years.
After domestic animated show Crazy Toys landed on Chinese streaming sites in April, many netizens noticed that posters and the Chinese title of the show were very similar to those of hit Disney animated film Zootopia.
According to a BBC report, 2007 cartoon Big Mouth Dodo and 2011 animated film Train Hero have also been criticized for their respective similarities to and "suspected plagiarism" of Japanese cartoons Crayon Shin-Chan and Hikarian: Great Railroad Protector.
"This is not just limited to the field of animation, the entire film industry has this problem. Everyone wants to make a quick buck," Wu Zhishuo, a movie director and producer, told the Global Times, explaining why Chinese studios are so willing to put out cheap knock off films.
According to Wu, producing a movie like The Autobots costs nearly 1 million yuan. Taking profit-sharing into account, The Autobots' nearly 6 million yuan box office means the production company earned nearly 2 million.
And this number doesn't factor in the government subsidies local studios receive.
According to a report on news.ifeng.com, original Chinese produced animated films are eligible to receive government subsidies if they are shown in a national cinema or on CCTV's movie channel. With subsidy rates at roughly 3,000 yuan per minute, the 85-minute long The Autobots should have received a 255,000 yuan subsidy.
"It's like a double insurance," Wu said.
"You can earn back your production costs by misleading audiences through marketing and by receiving a subsidy from the government."
On the whole, however, Wu said the subsidy is beneficial because it helps encourage Chinese animation studios. He noted the real problem is a lack of supervision which has led to some studios taking advantage of this policy.
With easy money to be had by making cheap copycat films, some netizens have expressed that even if Blue MTV loses the case the 4 million yuan financial penalty will not be enough to prevent it, and others, from similar behavior in the future.
Movie critic Zou Siping told the Global Times that several similar cases had been brought to court before but only a few verdicts ended up being worth the trouble for the plagiarized company. "Only a huge company like Disney and Pixar can sue Blue MTV and afford the high legal fees. Secondly, it's really hard to win if you can't provide evidence that is obvious enough to prove the similarities between two works."
