Theater firms scramble for managers

In the movie industry, theaters have more clout than film production and distribution companies, said Cai Ling, a cultural industry researcher with CIC Industry Research Center, a Shenzhen-based consultancy. The high managerial turnover rate in the sector will have a negative influence on the industry's development, he added.

In order to retain the managers they already have and to keep qualified candidates waiting in the wings, theaters have come up with different strategies.

Some train their employees as potential theater managers in advance, so as to fill vacancies in newly opened outlets or to respond immediately to unexpected turnovers, Liu said.

"We try not to recruit managers from outside our company. We prefer to maximize the potential of our own employees through proper training,"Wang from Beijing Megabox said.

Lu Yi, business manager of Shanghai-based Century Universal Film Network Development Co Ltd, which operates 20 theaters across Shanghai, Beijing and Jiangsu province, said: "Although our company is not big, our turnover rate is small. Most of our theater managers have witnessed the development of the company and have become emotionally attached to it.”

Yin from Cine Asia said, "The fundamental solution to the shortage is education, but currently, only a few Chinese universities and colleges offer theater management as a field of study.”

Beijing Film Academy began offering courses in theater management in 2010 in response to the widening gap between supply and demand.

"As far as I know, it is the only example of theater management studies at the university level in China,"Liu from Entgroup said.

The number of movie theaters increased to 3,680 by the end of 2012 from a year earlier, up 31.4 percent year-on-year, according to statistics from EntGroup.

National box office revenues reached 17.07 billion yuan last year, registering a year-on-year growth of 30.18 percent. Ticket sales from 25 theater chains exceeded 100 million yuan, of which six generated sales worth more than 1 billion yuan each, according to the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television.