Zhang Zhao, chief executive of Le Vision Pictures, believes it's a gamble worth taking. Le Vision Pictures is a film distribution and production company that recently opened an office in Hollywood to recruit local talent for co-productions. Last year it co-financed , the third instalment in the action movie franchise led by Sylvester Stallone.

Zhang believes will see the start of a trend - Chinese blockbusters becoming popular worldwide.

"The movie industry has reached the stage of globalisation," he says. "While we are making movies like , putting money into co-producing movies with Hollywood studios, those movies are still developed by them; meanwhile, we need to develop movies that allow them to work with us."

Zhang explains that is the perfect Chinese production for a mainstream global audience. They made the movie mostly in English because cinema-goers don't like reading subtitles. He enthuses that if you combine blockbuster-style visuals, with a big cast of Hollywood and Chinese stars, and a story that is about a global landmark, you have a hit.

"People just see the Great Wall, but they don't know the story behind it," Zhang says. "As long as you have a good story, a story they can understand, about family, heroes, good against evil ... they will be interested, I believe."

Zhang's beliefs carry some weight. He is currently the head of the third largest film production company in China, which is also one of the country's top online video platforms. Zhang studied film production at New York University in the 1990s and made a couple of short films as a student.

Personally, Zhang prefers smaller, more personal dramas. He says Zhang Yimou's first movie, (1987), had a profound impact on him (because of its patriotic tone) as did the director's most recent outing, (2014), starring Gong Li. However, he understands that a blockbuster is a safer bet when it comes to building a global audience.

"We're constantly trying to produce good movies, but the reality is that this is ultimately a business, it's a big business," he says. "You can't just try to make movies that touch you personally; you have to make movies that touch everyone."

Feng said it was “a great pressure for every Chinese director”. 

He referred to Furious 7, the latest instalment in the Fast and Furious action franchise, which opened in China last weekend and took US$68.6 million on Sunday alone. "I hope every director can balance art and commerce and that Chinese directors can push back (against pressure from Hollywood)," The Hollywood Reporter quoted him as saying. 

If a Chinese production hopes to appeal to movie-goers worldwide, going down the blockbuster route makes sense, says Stanley Rosen, a political science professor at the University of Southern California who specialises in Chinese politics and society. He wrote a forthcoming paper on how Chinese films have performed overseas, and points out that since Ang Lee's came out in 2000, foreign-language movies have found it hard to become global hits.

" made US$128 million in North America. That's a feat that has never been duplicated. And not likely to be duplicated," Rosen says.

Rosen says films set in specific periods in Chinese history (like , during the Cultural Revolution) will be hard to sell if the audience doesn't understand China's history well. He also says films that are critical to the country are also likely to end their life in the censor's office.

"They don't want to show anything bad or negative about China; they want positive images. They don't want anything that's too edgy, and political decisions overcome any artistic decisions," Rosen says, adding that is a big disadvantage for filmmakers in China.

"I always tell, when I lecture in China, one of the reasons why American soft power is so successful is because it's separated from the government completely, so you can have Hollywood films showing the evils of the American government," Rosen says.

"If you look at the Oscar winner for best documentary, , about Edward Snowden ... Edward Snowden is wanted by the American government for treason, basically, yet the film praising him wins the best documentary at the Academy Awards. China could never do anything like that."

Rosen adds that most of the Chinese filmmakers he's interacted with are aware that, to lawmakers in China, "film is secondary to politics".

Rosen says that's also why it's so important to the Chinese government to produce a global box office hit.

"China, I think, is desperate to promote its soft power," Rosen says. "They are somewhat resentful that Hollywood and American culture is so prevalent in China, whether it's TV series like or , or Hollywood films like . They want some reciprocity for Chinese culture overseas."

Whether , scheduled for global release in 3D in November 2016, will start turning the tide is yet to be seen, but Zhang Zhao is confident. For him, not only a new project, but a new trend is about to take off.