Paramount Pictures and Chinese studio 1905 have been ordered by the Chongqing No.3 Intermediate People’s Court to pay the Chongqing Wulong Scenic Area 2 million yuan ($295,000) for failing to feature a logo for the tourist attraction in the fourth film of the Transformers film franchise.

The settlement entails 1.8 million yuan in compensation for financial losses as well as another 209,000 yuan as compensation for copyright fees.

As the Chongqing Morning Post reported, a recent survey revealed that 87 percent of 551 people surveyed from Beijing, Shanghai and Guangdong Province said they did not know where in China the scenes had been shot.

Besides the Chongqing Wulong Scenic area, the third Transformers sequel was also shot on location in Hong Kong.

At the time the lawsuit was filed, Li Chu from Wulong’s Tourism Marketing Center said the film is presented in such a way that the Hong Kong and Wulong scenes run together, which may lead the audience to believe they are the same place.

Chongqing Wulong Scenic Area was seeking termination of the original contract and a return of its six million yuan payment. Paramount and 1905 counterclaimed for 12 million yuan for a final payment and 11 million in late fees, claiming that Chongqing Wulong’s delay in payment was the reason its name wasn’t added in the film’s post-production.

The film was also involved in litigation with Zhou Hei Ya in another product placement dispute.

Transformers: Age of Extinction raked in US $225.1 million in its first 12 days of release, and remains the fourth highest-grossing film in China two years after its release.

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Arnold Schwarzenegger is set to take on the leading role in a $200 million Chinese blockbuster about a long-lost Chinese civilization, recently rediscovered in the 80s.

Tentatively titled The Guest of Sanxingdui, the project is expected to start filming next year and has a 2019 release date. In addition to producing the film, Schwarzenegger will as serve as an overseas spokesperson for Sanxingdui, which also happens to be a tourist site in Sichuan containing the ruins to the remnant of the Shu Kingdom.

Film investment company Beijing Ajimo describes the film as “a 3D production featuring Hollywood technology and oriental culture.”

Schwarzenegger was seen at the Sanxingdui museum on October 24 where he viewed many of its Bronze Age relics.

Even though the former governor and 80s action star doesn’t have the draw he once had, Schwarzenegger’s Terminator Genisys was well received by Chinese audiences. The latest Terminator offering is also one of the top 50 highest grossing movies in China.

Schwarzenegger is the latest of a long line of Hollywood stars that have been courted to take part in Chinese films. Matt Damon is set to take part in Zhang Yimou’s The Great Wall next year, while Christian Bale was cast in a previous Zhang film about the Nanjing Massacre, The Flowers of War.

Last year’s Dragon Blade featured John Cusack and Adrien Brody as dueling English-speaking Roman generals, while another Jackie Chan film The Myth was a historical mash-up that featured a movie star from India, Mallika Sherawat.

Meanwhile, Brandon Routh appeared as a Chinese chef with deadly fighting skills in Lost in the Pacific while Hong Kong auteur Wong Kar-Wai cast Norah Jones as his lead actor in his only English-speaking film, My Blueberry Nights.

But audiences won’t have to wait long to see Schwarzenegger in a Chinese film. The Terminator wrapped shooting a scene with Jackie Chan in the upcoming Chinese Travelogue (shown below).

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Although Chinese theaters won’t be screening the Ghostbusters re-make or the motley anti-heroes of Suicide Squad, film fans in China will be treated to seven big Hollywood movies over the next few weeks; that’s more Hollywood movies than was offered this past summer between July and September.

Just 34 foreign films are allowed into Chinese theaters each year, but this fall’s bountiful crop of Hollywood popcorn flicks may just be the beginning. A WTO agreement is up for renewal next February, so we could be looking at even more Hollywood movies as China opens up its film market to foreign competition.

Here’s what you can find at the theaters in China over the next few weeks:

Jack Reacher: Never Go Back – October 21

Tom Cruise proves he is up to the task of portraying Lee Child’s infallible ex-military police officer for a second outing on the silver screen. This time, our hero Jack Reacher confronts accusations of a 16 year-old murder when he goes back to his old army unit headquarters.

Like Cruise’s blockbuster hit Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, this film is backed by Chinese investors. Jack Reacher: Never Go Back is a joint venture between Paramount Pictures, Shanghai Film Group and Huahua Media, who were also responsible for Star Trek: Beyond.

Mechanic: Resurrection – October 21

Jason Statham plays the same character in this sequel about a deadly assassin with a penchant for faking his own death. Statham is joined by Jessica Alba and Tommy Lee Jones as he attempts to perform “one last job” while receiving assistance and expository dialog from Michelle Yeoh.

Mechanic: Resurrection was released in the West this past summer where it has received middling reviews.

Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection ‘F’ – October 21

The only non-Hollywood movie on our list, this long-running Japanese anime series finally makes its way to Chinese theaters after its worldwide release 18-months ago.

The Super Saiyans must do battle against an invading force of aliens in this well-received animated feature.

Inferno – October 28

After a long gestation, Tom Hanks is back in the third part of Dan Brown’s wildly successful series kicked off by The Da Vinci Code. This time, Harvard professor of symbology Robert Langdon must race against time as a deadly virus threatens the globe.

Doctor Strange – November 4

The latest installment in the lucrative Marvel Cinematic Universe features the titular character travelling around the world to the exotic far east where he learns a lost art from a person who looks just like himself.

Starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Tilda Swinton, Doctor Strange has been criticized for deviating from its source material, but that’s not entirely true: Doctor Strange’s Chinese title, 奇怪博士, translates back into English as “Doctor Strange”.

Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk – November 11

Celebrated Taiwanese-American director Ang Lee continues to push the boundaries of film-making with this latest movie about a 19 year-old American soldier’s recollections of the Iraq war. Extraordinary lengths were made to make the film, which was shot in 3D with 4K resolution.

Unfortunately, Chinese audiences wanting to see the film as the director intended will have limited options; only two theaters in China, one in Beijing and the other in Shanghai, have projectors capable of showing the film at its optimal resolution.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them – November 18

JK Rowling’s Harry Potter franchise gets a spin-off that takes the audience to 1920s New York in what is to be the first in a five-part series.

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Ticket sales for the week beginning Monday, September 12 and ending Sunday, September 18 totaled RMB 773 million (US$110 million), a nearly two-fold increase over the previous week’s frigid output. Box office gross across the three-day holiday — celebrated from Thursday to Saturday — hit RMB 510 million ($76 million) and accounted for 70 percent of the entire week’s moviegoing business.

Despite the significant jump, however, this year’s Mid-Autumn Festival paled in comparison to 2015 when the holiday lasted just two days, but reaped RMB 610 million ($91 million) in ticket sales thanks to the performance of blockbuster sequel Lost in Hong Kong (港囧). China’s depressed film market in 2016 continues.

In first place for the week, fantasy sequel A Chinese Odyssey Part 3 (大话西游3) opened to early previews on Tuesday evening and easily led all new releases with RMB 250 million ($37.5 million) through 5 days of release; for comparison, last year’s Lost in Hong Kong clocked $31.1 million…on its opening day.

Helmed by Hong Kong director Jeffrey Lau, A Chinese Odyssey Part 3 was skewered online for rehashing the same story; in Chinese, commentators dubbed the sequel “炒冷饭” (chǎo lěng fàn), literally “stir-fried leftover rice.”

Lau had directed the first two installments —A Chinese Odyssey from 1995 starring Stephen Chow and the Wong Kar-wai-produced sequel in 2002 — and both are considered classic Hong Kong comedies. Lau’s goodwill with Chinese audiences has faded since with a string of commercial and critical failures including A Chinese Tall Story (情癫大圣), Just Another Pandora’s Box (越光宝盒), and Just Another Margin (大话天仙). Still, the strength of A Chinese Odyssey’s IP seems to have prevailed and Chinese moviegoers will most likely be stuck with further sequels.

Another sequel, Z Storm II (反贪风暴2), grabbed second with a five-day RMB 171 million total ($17.8 million). Although the crime thriller’s performance couldn’t match fellow genre breakouts Cold War 2 and Line Walker, its box office success continues the resurgence of Hong Kong-produced crime thrillers in the rest of China.

Third and fourth place went to the best reviewed films of the week — Cock and Bull (追凶者也), director Cao Baoping’s (曹保平) follow up to his successful crime thriller The Dead End (烈日灼心), and Soulmate (七月与安生), a rare well-received entry into China’s oft-maligned “youthfulness” (青春片) genre. Cock and Bull earned RMB 78.5 million ($11.8 million) andSoulmate found RMB 72.3 million ($10.8 million).

French action film Bastille Day and Warner Animation Group’s Storks release next on a quiet weekend before another onslaught of local films for National Day, October 1.

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Total ticket sales, however, from Friday to Sunday hit just RMB 246 million (US$34.8 million), the lowest weekend total in 2016, second only to the run-up to February’s Lunar New Year, when most Chinese families were busy traveling or preparing for the holiday, and many cinemas shuttered to patrons.

College-aged students — a main driving force behind China’s box office boom — recently returned to school, which certainly would have contributed to the significant lull in cinema business this weekend, but a lack of eye-catching titles also played a role. September is shaping up to be yet another lackluster month in what’s been an underwhelming year at the Chinese box office.

Star Trek Beyond (星际迷航3：超越星辰), the third installment in Paramount’s rebooted sci-fi franchise, dropped a steep 63 percent this weekend to corral RMB 76 million ($11.3 million) and push its 10-day total to RMB 358 million ($53.3 million). Given the local marketing blitz by investors Alibaba and Huahua Media, Star Trek Beyond’s performance in China is another letdown for Paramount following Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle 2’s disappointing run in July.

Opening in second place, Sony’s latest revenue-sharing import The Shallows (鲨滩) chomped up RMB 56.2 million ($8.4 million) in ticket sales this weekend. The debut was exactly half of The Shallows’ North American bow where the shark thriller starring Blake Lively has grossed $55 million. The Shallows will struggle to gross much more in China given a slew of local titles opening this weekend for China’s Mid-Autumn Festival.

French distributor EuropaCorp’s talking cat film Nine Lives (九条命), which bombed commercially and critically Stateside, inexplicably found an accepting audience in China, where it debuted with RMB 54.9 million ($8.2 million), $2 million more than its opening weekend in North America. Nine Lives was imported on a flat-fee basis (as opposed to revenue-sharing where Hollywood studios receive 25% of the Chinese box office revenue) and distributed by Shanghai-based Fundamental Films. EuropaCorp’s ongoing distribution partnership with Fundamental, first agreed upon in 2012 and now extended through 2020, has been a boon to its catalog with titles such as The Transporter Refueled and Brick Mansions grossing more in China than in North America.

Rounding out the top five were Hollywood revenue-sharing holdovers Ice Age: Collision Course adding $2.6 million for a 20-day total of $63.8 million, and Jason Bourne with $1.1 million to give the Universal thriller $66.3 million overall.

Further down the list, Absolutely Anything, a British fantasy comedy from 2014 starring Kate Beckinsale and Simon Pegg, flopped hard with just $0.98 million in its debut. Absolutely Anything was imported by Huahua Media and Yuehua Entertainment on a flat-fee basis.

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In North America, ‘Beyond‘ has failed to match the box office receipts of its predecessor, 2013’s Star Trek Into Darkness($228.8 million vs $151.4 million), and the new film’s worldwide box office revenue sits at a paltry $244.2 million compared to the $467.4 million grossed by ‘Darkness.’

A fourth chapter is already confirmed in the works, but one has to wonder if even a robust performance in China, bolstered by the support of local Chinese heavyweights Alibaba and Huahua Media, will help ease investors’ worries that the franchise is beginning to fade? Below, CFI takes a look at Star Trek Beyond’s box office potential.

Star Trek Beyond (星际迷航3：超越星辰)

CFI Score – 7/10

China Distribution: China Film Group Corporation (中国电影集团公司)
U.S. Distribution: Paramount Pictures

Following investments in Paramount sequels Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows, Alibaba Pictures, the production arm of Jack Ma’s e-commerce giant, has teamed-up again with the Hollywood studio on an undisclosed investment in this latest Star Trek.

The Alibaba-Paramount partnership thus far, however, has resulted in underperformance at the box office. ‘Rogue Nation‘ grossed $135.6 million last year in China, where many analysts expected larger returns for the Tom Cruise vehicle. In Alibaba’s 2015 annual report, the company reported the film contributed just $10.6 million in revenue and $1.1 million in profit to its bottom line.

This summer’s Ninja Turtles sequel also had a woeful box office performance, grossing just $58.9 million despite a prime summer release date, well below the $62.1 million grossed in China in November 2014 by the original ‘Turtles’ film.

Huahua Media (华桦传媒), a fast growing marketing company with global film ambitions of its own, also joins Star Trek Beyond as an investor.

Huahua previously honed its marketing chops on Transformers: Age of Extinction and Cloud Atlas, two films whose Chinese box office exceeded their North American numbers.

For Star Trek Beyond, Huahua collaborated with China’s top-rated variety show Happy Camp. The Hunan TV production aired an episode partly devoted to the film with exclusive cast interviews and segments previously recorded at Paramount.

Happy Camp’s host Xie Na—a.k.a. ‘Na Na’—and husband/pop-star Jason Zhang acted as cultural ambassadors for Star Trek Beyond, appearing at Comic-Con and promoting the film to their combined 120 million+ Weibo followers. Zhang recorded ‘Star Trek’s Chinese theme song, a funky pop-synth anthem entitled Lost in the Stars.

All of the local marketing gives Star Trek Beyond significant box office clout beyond most Hollywood releases in China and the film should be able to hit RMB 700 million ($105 million), doubling the total box office of Star Trek Into Darkness.

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The fifth installment in the spy franchise and a return for Matt Damon as the titular anti-hero, raked in RMB 329 million ($49.8 million) through six days of release according to Shanghai consulting firm Artisan Gateway — Universal reported a slightly softer $49.3 million — and has already outgrossed the RMB 213 million ($34.1 million) The Bourne Legacy totaled in 2012.

‘Bourne‘’s seemingly robust performance came amid complaints from Chinese moviegoers surrounding the film’s poorly-executed 3D release.

Universal and local distributors CFG and Huaxia opted to screen director Paul Greengrass’ action film in an “exclusive” 3D-only version, but ticket buyers were left peeved after shelling out extra cash for what essentially turned out to be a nauseating cinematic experience. It seems that Greengrass’ signature shaky hand-held camerawork and frenetic jump cut editing didn’t translate well to an added dimension, and reports of moviegoers queuing outside of restrooms to vomit and calling for a boycott flooded social media.

Later in the week the controversy was quelled somewhat when Universal responded by adding 2D screenings in most Chinese cities, but the damage was done. Compared to other recent Tuesday releases, such as Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation (Fri. +18%, Sat. +68%) and Avengers: Age of Ultron (Fri. +37%, Sat. +88%), Jason Bourne’s box office jumps on its first Friday and Saturday were just 13% and 43% respectively.

Picking up some of the slack, Ice Age: Collision Course, also a fifth installment, albeit in a kiddie animation series, flew to a six-day total of RMB 274 million ($41.6 million) according to Artisan Gateway, or $42.5 million according to Fox. Increased weekend business helped ‘Collision Course‘ to overtake ‘Bourne‘ on Sunday and early estimates for Monday put the animation ahead.

Paramount’s Star Trek Beyond beams into Chinese cinemas next Friday, and both ‘Bourne‘ and ‘Collision Course‘ will feel the pressure. ‘Collision Course‘ will end its run nearing RMB 500 million ($75 million) while Jason Bourne will finish with at most RMB 550 million ($82 million). Had Universal not bungled its release, $100 million+ could have been on the table.

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“Some well-known directors have recently come out with terrible films,” the CCP’s mouthpiece wrote. “If it’s too easy to make money, it’s too easy for the finished product to be mediocre.”

The paper blamed a glut of new money in the the country’s film industry for a spate of low-quality domestic films that are failing to sustain China’s recent cinema market growth, likening it to the “resource curse” of economic theory.

“In recent years, China’s film industry has grown rapidly, with box office takings going from RMB 10 billion now passing the RMB 60 billion mark,” said the paper. “But of the 600 films made each year, only a few can be called good quality.”

The paper derided the rise of celebrity culture and the lack of cinematic masterpieces produced in the 1980s, like Red Sorghum, Yellow Earth, and Farewell My Concubine.

“The films that dominate now are the most star-studded ones, with nice-looking scenes and a big budget for a promotional campaign,” said People’s Daily. “If even lousy films sell well, what’s going to motivate filmmakers to work hard on creating something of quality?”

This July, total domestic box office revenue declined for the first time in nearly five years, signaling a reversal of fortunes for the Chinese movie industry.

The country’s box office dropped 4.6 percent in the second quarter of 2016, according to statistics from the National Film Development Funds Management Committee.

The recent slump in box office takings is prompting some analysts to mark down their growth predictions for the coming quarters.

Liu Yan, an analyst with Southwest Securities has reduced his annual forecast for Chinese box office revenue to 53 billion yuan, down from the previous 60 billion yuan. Liu also cut the estimated growth rate to 20 per cent, from 30 per cent previously.

“The golden days of 2015, with nearly 50 per cent annual growth, will not come back,” he told the South China Morning Post.

“We don’t expect to see the same growth for at least the next three years.”

Other Chinese media outlets have been spreading the blame for the flagging box office numbers, with local newspaper Beijing Daily taking aim at “fresh meat” — Chinese Internet slang for teen idols — as being behind the spate of poor quality films.

The industry should pay more attention to the quality of films and strive to create works of art, the paper argued, rather than “worship young and handsome stars.”

Chinese social media users have also been venting their displeasure a the state of domestic films of late, with one film bearing most of the brunt of their scorn.

Despite featuring an all-star cast including  Jet Li, Tony Leung Ka-fai, Fan Bingbing, Louis Koo, Angelababy, and Xu Qing, action fantasy pic League of Gods (封神传奇) has been singled out on Chinese social media.

Online critics took aim at the film’s stars for their poor acting, ridiculous costumes, and the film itself for borrowing too obviously from other films like The Lord Of The Rings.

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Feng is one of the country’s most successful directors, with blockbusters including The Banquet, Aftershock, and If You Are the One.

Aftershock was selected as the Chinese entry for Best Foreign Language film at the Academy Awards in 2011, but did not make the Oscar shortlist.

His films have accounted for nearly US$1 billion at the Chinese box office and he has received more than 25 awards.

He is best known in China for his mastery of lighthearted hesui pian comedies, made to screen around the Chinese New Year.

The 58-year-old is also an actor, producer, and writer. Last year Feng wowed local audiences with his depiction of the title character in Mr. Six.

His most recent film, I Am Not Madame Bovary (我不是潘金莲), starring Fan Bingbing, will premiere at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival.

In a departure from his normally strongly commercial style, the film will be presented in an innovative round-screen format.

Feng, who has who has been described by Newsweek as “China’s Spielberg,” has been vocal about the nation’s censors holding back the country’s film industry.

In 2014, Feng joined with Jackie Chan to make a passionate plea for less censorship of their films at a high-level Communist Party meeting in Beijing.

More recently, Feng has decried the “low quality” of below-the-line workers as “a big barrier to the development of the Chinese film industry.”

CAA also represents Chinese directors including Zhang Yimou and Lu Chuan, Hong Kong directors John Woo and Wong Kar Wai, and Oscar-winning Chinese-American director Ang Lee, along with actors Jackie Chan, Jet Li, Donnie Yen and Yu Nan.

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Drawing on mapping query data, the positions of their users, the 25 billion location requests they enter, and the Wi-Fi hotspots they log into, Baidu said they are able to actively track the number of people actually watching movies in cinemas.

When movie producers buy out shows to boost ticket totals, the company can draw on its real-time data to verify the number of people attending film showings.

In a report demonstrating the potential of the research, Baidu showed how media reports that the distributor of last years’s box office record-breaker Monster Hunt had made up screenings to inflate box office figures were true.

Baidu’s ability to draw on this real-time data is so unrivaled that it claims it is able to detect fraud before any other party. The report’s authors even call the ability “now-casting” instead of forecasting because they are able to predict same-day box office takings — 24 hours earlier than official statistics.

Wu Haishan, a senior data scientist at Baidu’s Big Data Lab, told China Film Insider that the new box office data may be made available as early as next month.

“We’re going to test more cases about more movies to see if there’s been any box office fraud,” he said. “There have also been other movies that have been accused of box office fraud so we will continue to test those.”

Just this week, official figures released this week revealed a box office slump that is prompting questions about whether the boom has been as big as it first appeared.

The new figures confirmed what private firms like Bejing-based Ent Group had shown a week earlier — that box office takings fell for the first time in half a decade in the second quarter.

The sudden slowdown — after a period of break-neck growth last year in which the country’s box office expanded 49 percent last year — is being blamed by many on a reduction in ticket subsidies made by film producers.

The practice, whereby moviegoers buy tickets at a discount and producers subsidize the remainder of the full price, has led to a distortion in the numbers and lead to doubts about when exactly China will surpass North America as the world’s largest theatrical market.

Other blockbusters such as Lost in Hong Kong and Ip Man 3 have been among a number of domestic movies suspected of inflating box office figures recently.

The company will look towards providing real-time data on current films but that it will require considerable computational resources, Wu said.

Having accurate data about box office takings will not only be useful for investors, but also for the viewing public, he said.

“They’re also very interested in what the real box office numbers are,” Wu said. “Because some producers are using inflated box office numbers to attract more of an audience, but maybe this is not the true case.”

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