Research about the Chinese film industry is far behind the actual development of practice, especially considering its evolution and main influential factors. Furthermore, existing research on the film industry in economic geography is mostly conducted from the perspective of cluster theory, with lesser attention to institutions or culture. In this paper, the theory of co-evolution is used to tackle these two gaps. The role of institutions, culture and industrial organization as three fundamental elements of co-evolution is pointed out and discussed in the theoretical section. The phenomena of co-evolution in the Shanghai film industry as important examples of the Chinese film industry are analysed in the empirical part. We phase the development process in four periods and differentiate identified effects of co-evolution between institutions, culture and industrial organization based on the specific setting in each particular period.