From Marvel to Fan Bingbing, who benefits from Hollywood’s courting of China?
Hollywood is increasingly seeking to attract Chinese film-goers as the industry realigns – and major players on both sides of the Pacific want in on the action
With China on course to become the world’s biggest box-office market within two or three years, Hollywood studios have been tripping over each other for a ticket to ride what Stephen Colbert recently dubbed “the pander express”.
It’s hard not to be cynical when efforts to engage Chinese audiences usually seem to involve such screenwriting masterstrokes as getting your giant robots to lay waste to Shanghai instead of San Francisco, or some lantern-jawed action hero displaying an unlikely taste for hanzi-labelled soy milk. The world of cinema is supposedly bracing itself for complete realignment, but you could be forgiven for thinking the only people benefitting at the moment are washed-up American directors on the funding trail and Chinese stars looking to raise their global profile.
But it’s time to look closer – billions of dollars and soft-power pre-eminence are on the table. Here are 10 parties with big stakes in Hollywood’s drive eastwards.
1. Wang Jianlin
Hollywood’s involvement in China is not a one-way street. Looking for finance doesn’t just mean via the box office – especially with China’s top media players keen to invest directly in the American industry. At the front of the queue is Wang Jianlin, Asia’s richest man and chairman of the Dalian Wanda conglomerate, who now owns AMC (the second largest cinema chain in the US), Legendary Entertainment (producers of The Dark Knight and Jurassic World) and Dick Clark Productions (responsible for the Golden Globes).
Some believe his conflicting interests in film production and exhibition might put him in breach of the 1948 antitrust ruling that broke up the studios’ monopoly.
With Wang only one of a number of wealthy Asian investors bankrolling Hollywood, 16 US congressmen recently called for an inquiry into growing Chinese influence. But with the US industry looking to learn Chinese, how can they not expect the opposite to also be true?
2. Struggling franchises
But this dubious insurance policy is likely to expire soon. Hollywood’s dirty secret in the noughties, after DVD sales declined, was dumping substandard product on overseas territories and aggregating the numbers to break even. With Chinese filmgoers increasingly expecting quality, they’re likely to be one of the first markets to rebel.
3. Zhang Yimou
4. Marvel
5. China Film Group
China might be the new box-office Klondike, but that doesn’t mean Hollywood is walking away with all the nuggets. Only 34 foreign films are allowed into the country each year under the quota system – and the studios receive only 25 per cent of the profits under a revenue-sharing scheme (around half of their takeaway elsewhere). China Film Group, the state film behemoth, is the only sanctioned film importer and takes about 22 per cent of the proceeds for the pleasure.
So what’s good for Hollywood is also good for local coffers. Especially in 2016: the mostly poor performance of local films has seen box-office projections flag well behind the US$7.5-9 billion range projected at the start of the year. Meaning China Film Group sneakily extended last year’s quota to 38; a permanent expansion is expected in 2017.
6. Donald Tang
When two culturally far-flung entities like Hollywood and China sound each other out, it’s the hour of the intermediary. Beijing-based media agency DMG made a name early as “gatekeeper” to culturally tone-deaf LA newbies, and had a hand in Iron Man 3, Looper, Transcendence and the Point Break remake. But investment banker Donald Tang is shaping up as perhaps the most significant broker between worlds.
The Shanghai-born former head of Bear Stearns Asia is now based in California; he helped shape Dalian Wanda’s AMC coup, secure Chinese financing for hyped start-up STX and has connections to most of the big Chinese moguls. Now, with his company recently acquiring the mini-studio IM Global (responsible for Martin Scorsese’s forthcoming Silence), he’s getting his hands dirty – proof, in this cross-border world, of how a banker’s chequebook in Beijing can start the cameras rolling elsewhere.
7. Scarlett Johansson
Chinoiserie was a style of decoration, popular in the West in the 18th century, in which ceramics, interior design and gardens were given an oriental veneer. It’s still working for the 21st-century blockbuster industry as a quick means of appealing to both East and West: Pacific Rim appropriated Japanese kaiju destruction (that’s when monsters wreak havoc), and Big Hero 6 took place in the fusion city of San Fransokyo. Both were big hits in China.
8. Fan Bingbing
China’s biggest female box-office draw is the “flower vase” (as locals dub stars opportunistically cameoing in Hollywood films) currently most likely to break through. When Tony Stark turned to Chinese medicine to get his chest shrapnel removed in Iron Man 3, she was the beauty in the operating theatre; she also had a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it part in X-Men: Days of Future Past (literally – she played the mutant Blink).
Her English still isn’t fluent enough to fully leap the language barrier that has hindered most Asian actors, but she has more momentum than the old generation of bilingual Hong Kong stars and Chinese peers such as Zhang Ziyi, who may have already spent their Hollywood currency. Getting sandwiched between Jackie Chan and Johnny Knoxville in last summer’s Skiptrace, one of the few big local hits of the year, will only have enhanced her crossover credentials.
9. Qingdao Oriental Movie Metropolis
Another way China is trying to out-Hollywood Hollywood is by establishing Qingdao as a production base to entice the “runaway productions” that have spurned Los Angeles over the past 30 years. Recently trumpeting a massive 40 per cent tax rebate for foreign productions, this Wanda-owned complex will be the world’s biggest studios when it opens in 2018.
The Great Wall filmed scenes on the existing facilities, and Legendary’s forthcoming Godzilla and Pacific Rim sequels will line up there too. But it will need to pack in more than in-house productions to give Qingdao that international lustre to match LA, Mumbai or even the fading glories of Hong Kong – which means pulling in Hollywood blockbusters.
10. Cao Cao
