How The Rock conquered China’s box office and proved he’s the biggest movie star on the planet
Rampage takes nearly half of its US$115.7 million international gross in China, as mainland audiences just want to see ‘bankable’ Dwayne Johnson
For many studio heads, these days, glancing at how their latest movie did in China is in some ways more important than seeing how it did in North America. That is because things are changing drastically for an industry in which the domestic box office had been considered the true indicator of a movie's worth for over a century.
Since the early 2000s, the movie market in China has gone from almost non-existent to second behind only the US. And it could become No 1 by 2020, as movie theatres continue to be built at a hurried pace to feed the interest of not just the Hollywood titles but those made by the country's burgeoning home-grown production industry.
Everyone in Hollywood is trying to figure out how to navigate this sea change. Which stories work best? Which are duds? And which movie stars can rake in the cash?
That last one has become an easy answer: Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson.
His latest CGI (and testosterone) heavy blockbuster, Rampage, won the US box office over the weekend with a US$35.8 million take for its studio Warner Bros. But what the movie did in China has the studio ecstatic, as it took in US$55.2 million there as part of a US$115.7 million international gross.