How China was sold on Oscar winner Green Book, Bohemian Rhapsody and a Lebanese tragedy – lessons for Hollywood in creative marketing

How did a film about America’s Jim Crow South gross US$71 million in China? Make it about the food. And Bohemian Rhapsody? Make screenings a mass karaoke

Alibaba Pictures president Zhang Wei talks Hollywood executives through its successes, and tells them where they have been going wrong

4-MIN READ4-MIN

What do Chinese cinema-goers want to see? All kinds of films, says Alibaba Pictures’ Zhang Wei. The company used unconventional marketing to drive ticket sales for foreign films in the world’s biggest movie market this year. Photo: Alamy

Published: 12:48pm, 26 Nov 2019Updated: 7:39pm, 26 Nov 2019

For every The Meg, a CGI extravaganza that wowed cinema-goers in China but not as many in the United States, there is a Crazy Rich Asians, which did the complete opposite. Cracking the Chinese film market is still the holy grail for many in Hollywood, and it was, unsurprisingly, a topic of interest at this year’s US-Asia Entertainment Summit, held recently in Los Angeles.

Among the speakers was Alibaba Pictures president Zhang Wei, who shed some light on the subject. She was responsible for the e-commerce giant’s first major Hollywood investment, Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation, and what she said took many by surprise. (Alibaba Pictures is part of the Alibaba Group, which owns the South China Morning Post.)

Zhang said Alibaba Pictures’ biggest crossover success this year had been not an action blockbuster with over-the-top special effects but Green Book, a film whose plot depends on an understanding of US history and race relations, which features no big international names, and whose running time is largely taken up by two men talking in a car.

Green Book made US$85.1 million in North America, and to date has taken nearly US$71 million in China, making it the second biggest grossing Best Picture Oscar winner in China after Titanic.

Alibaba Pictures distributed Green Book, starring Viggo Mortensen (left) and Mahershala Ali, in China and noticed viewers focused a lot on the Southern food the characters ate. Its sister food-delivery company offered viewers discounts to drive ticket sales. Photo: Alamy

If there was one takeaway Zhang wanted to impress on her audience, it was that “what do Chinese audiences want?” is a question that is not only impossible to answer, but it is the wrong question to be asking in the first place.