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A sequence from the film 'Pixels' was altered to remove images of the Great Wall under attack from aliens. Photo: AP

Hollywood blockbusters tailored to please censors and access lucrative China market

A number of US blockbusters have been changed to soothe Chinese sensitivities as the mainland becomes a major movie market

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In a 2013 script for the movie , intergalactic aliens blast a hole in one of China's national treasures - the Great Wall.

That scene is gone from the final version of the sci-fi comedy, starring Adam Sandler and released by Sony Pictures Entertainment this week in the United States. The aliens strike iconic sites elsewhere, smashing the Taj Mahal in India, the Washington Monument and parts of Manhattan.

Sony executives spared the Great Wall because they were anxious to get the film approved for release in the mainland, a review of internal Sony Pictures emails shows. It is just one of a series of changes aimed at stripping the movie of content that, Sony managers feared, mainland authorities might have construed as casting their country in a negative light.

Along with the Great Wall scene, out went another in which China was mentioned as a potential culprit behind an attack, as well as a reference to a "Communist-conspiracy brother" hacking a mail server - all to increase the chances of getting access to the second-biggest box office.

"Even though breaking a hole on the Great Wall may not be a problem as long as it is part of a worldwide phenomenon, it is actually unnecessary because it will not benefit the China release at all. I would then, recommend not to do it," Li Chow, chief representative of Sony Pictures in China, wrote in a December 2013 email to senior Sony executives.

Li's message is one of tens of thousands of confidential Sony emails and documents that were hacked and publicly released late last year. The US government blamed North Korea for the breach. In April, WikiLeaks published the trove of emails, memos and presentations from the Sony hack in an online archive.

"We are not going to comment on stolen emails or internal discussions about specific content decisions," said a spokesman for Sony Pictures, a unit of Tokyo-based Sony Corp. "There are myriad factors that go into determining what is best for a film's release, and creating content that has wide global appeal without compromising creative integrity is top among them."

The Sony emails provide a behind-the-scenes picture of the extent to which one of the world's leading film studios exercised self-censorship as its executives tried to anticipate how authorities in Beijing might react to their productions. The internal message traffic also illustrates the deepening dependence of Hollywood on mainland audiences, where box office receipts jumped by a third last year as revenues in the US and Canada shrank.

Other studios have made changes to movies in a bid to get them approved by Beijing, altering the version that is screened in China. A scene showing a Chinese doctor who helps the main character in , for example, was lengthened in the mainland version and included popular actress Fan Bingbing , a comparison of the Chinese and international versions shows. Produced by Marvel Studios, was the second-top-grossing film in mainland China in 2013. Marvel declined to comment.

'Iron Man 3' was edited to give more screen time to a Chinese character. Photo: AP

Efforts by the US film industry to woo China come as the ruling Communist Party under President Xi Jinping is engaged in the biggest crackdown on civil society in more than two decades. About a dozen human rights lawyers were taken into police custody this month.

As China rises, its efforts to contain civil liberties at home are radiating outwards. The removal of scenes from thought to be offensive to Beijing shows how global audiences are effectively being subjected to standards set by China, whose government rejects the kinds of freedoms that have allowed Hollywood to flourish.

"I think the studios have grown pretty savvy," said Peter Shiao, founder and CEO of Orb Media Group, an independent film studio focused on Hollywood-Chinese co-productions. "For a type of movie, particularly the global blockbusters, they are not going to go and make something that the Chinese would reject for social or political reasons. That is already a truism."

For Hollywood studios, the allure of the mainland box office has become increasingly difficult to resist. While box office receipts in the United States and Canada combined fell 5 per cent last year to US$10.4 billion compared with 2013, mainland receipts jumped 34 per cent to US$4.8 billion in the same period, according to the Motion Picture Association of America.

The mainland is on course to set a new record this year. Box office receipts were US$3.3 billion in the first half of this year, mainland media reported. Last November, the vice-president of the China Film Producers' Association, Wang Fenglin, said the mainland film market would overtake the US to become the largest in the world within three years.

The importance of the mainland market appears to have informed decisions taken by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios in its 2012 remake of the action movie . MGM changed the nationality of the soldiers who invade the US from Chinese to North Korean in post-production, according to producer Tripp Vinson. MGM did not respond to requests for comment.

To get on the mainland circuit, a movie must win the approval of the Film Bureau, which is headed by Zhang Hongsen, a domestic television screenwriter and senior Communist Party member.

"Foreign films come to China one after another like aircraft carriers; we are facing great pressure and challenges," Zhang said last year. "We must make the Chinese film industry bigger and stronger."

The Film Bureau is part of the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television (SAPPRFT), which reports directly to the State Council. The administration controls state-owned enterprises in the communications field, including China Central Television and China Radio International.

Censorship guidelines are included in a 2001 order issued by the State Council. The order bans content that endangers the unity, sovereignty and territorial integrity of the country, harms national honour and disrupts social stability. Harming public morality and national traditions is also forbidden.

In 'Captain Phillips', the notion that the US military would intervene to save the life of one of its citizens was expected to send up a red flag among Chinese censors. Photo: AP

The censorship process can be unpredictable, the Sony emails show. Early last year, the studio was faced with a demand to remove for mainland audiences a key but disturbing scene from , the story of a part-man, part-machine police officer.

"Censorship really hassling us on trying to cut out the best and most vital scene where they open up his suit and expose what is left of him as a person," reads a January 28, 2014 email written by international executive Steven O'Dell. "Hope to get through it with only shortening up the scene a bit. Don't think we can make a stand on it either way, too much money on the line, cross fingers we don't have to cut the scene out."

The political climate under Xi may also be playing a role, one email indicates.

"As to greater flexibility, I am not so sure about that," Sony China executive Li Chow wrote early last year, commenting on a media report that Beijing was mulling an increase in its foreign film quota. "The present government seems more conservative in all aspects and this is reflected by the repeated cuts to . Lately, members of the censorship board seem uncertain, fearful and overly careful."

The cost of not winning approval to distribute a film in the mainland is also evident in the Sony emails. In February last year, a Sony marketing executive circulated an email: "Please note that will not be released theatrically in China" - a reference to the film in which Tom Hanks stars as Captain Richard Phillips, who was taken hostage by Somali pirates.

Budget discussions about contained in the emails show that Sony executives had expected to earn US$120 million globally from the film, but that changed when they didn't get approval for it to be screened in China.

"We are short US$9 million and we won't be getting into China," emailed notes from a conference call read. "We need to grab every dollar we can to meet our objectives. It is incumbent on all of us to try to figure out how we can get more money from this picture."

In a December 2013 email, Rory Bruer, president of worldwide distribution at Sony Pictures, had speculated that was unlikely to be approved by mainland censors. In the film, the US military rescues the ship's captain. That plot element, Bruer noted, might make the mainland squirm.

"The reality of the situation is that China will probably never clear the film for censorship," wrote Bruer. "Reasons being the big military machine of the US saving one US citizen. China would never do the same and in no way would want to promote this idea. Also just the political tone of the film is something that they would not feel comfortable with."

 

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Hollywood's red dawn
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