By Professor of Marketing Jeongwen Chiang, co-authored with Chen Lin

The Chinese movie industry has never been so shocked as it’s been by two 31-year-old movie directors: Guo Jingming and Han Han, both of whom are also best-selling authors in China. Guo’s Tiny Times 3 is the latest sequel of a film franchise adapted from his own novel of the same name which sold 1.4 million copies within two months after being published. Tiny Times 3 was on 45% of China’s movie screens after its June 7 premiere pulled in revenues of over RMB 110 million, a record for domestic 2D films. A few weeks later on July 24 Han Han’s The Continent premiered as well, and by now has made more than RMB 700 million. Both movies unseated Transformers: Age of Extinction to take the top spot at China’s box office.

Guo and Han are long-time rivals. They’re the best-selling as well as most controversial writers with royalties of RMB 120 million and RMB 51.2 million respectively, and now they’re taking the film industry by storm, marking a new era of “fan films” in China. Read more on Forbes.com

Poster for Guo's Tiny Times 1. Credit FEFF16 via Flickr