Vessel News – by Erich Schwartzel, Wall Street Journal
February’s premiere of “The Great Wall” showcased the calculated balance between two superpowers.
Matt Damon walked the red carpet with his Chinese co-star, Jing Tian. Director Zhang Yimou thanked co-producers Universal Pictures and China-owned Dalian Wanda Group Co. The afterparty had sweet-and-sour chicken.
The movie’s poor showing didn’t slow the trans-Pacific collaboration. Hollywood has become so entangled with China that the movie industry can’t run without it.
Chinese investors and more than a billion potential moviegoers have made China indispensable to the film business. The country’s box-office total last year, at $6.6 billion, was the world’s second-largest compared with the first-place U.S., $11.4 billion. In a few years, analysts predict, China will be No. 1.
While the U.S. movie-ticket sales have remained relatively flat, China’s have more than tripled since 2011.
“We never thought of China 10 years ago. Now, we’re at a point where Hollywood can’t exist without China,” said Adam Goodman, a former production chief at Paramount Pictures. He now runs a film-production company backed by Le Eco, a Beijing-based technology company.
Private and state-backed Chinese companies have invested tens of billions of dollars in U.S. film ventures over the past decade. The relationship comes with strings attached. Chinese authorities, censors and consumers influence nearly every aspect of American moviemaking in China, from scripts to casting to greenlighting sequels.
Well, of course! Have you seen the beginning of every movie these past couple of years? When they show all of the production companies, half of them are Chinese companies such as Wanda group or production companies from Beijing and Shanghai.
Go watch Fast and Furious 8 and see how half of the production companies they introduce at the beginning are from China. Hell, watch the Transformer movies or the latest Independence Day movie, even (which was absolute shit, by the way). I’m sure Disney and Marvel movies will have some sort of Chinese production company investing in them, too.
Just look at all of the Chinese subliminal advertising they have in movies these days or even the completely unnecessary Chinese characters used to please the Asian market that have little if any value to the movie or its plot whatsoever. It’s ridiculous.
It seems like every movie these days or even TV shows have to have a shot of Hong Kong or Shanghai or some place in China even if it is completely unnecessary. I’m so sick of it.
Why the hell do we have to cater to China? Why the hell do we need their help producing a movie? And why the hell do they show all our movies in China first BEFORE they show them here in the US?
Talk about betraying your own country. Way to show respect for your own countrymen, Hollywood!
But what do you expect from a country that is occupied by a foreign government. And what do you expect from a movie industry that lives in a state occupied by illegal Mexicans and the Chinese Triad.
It’s absolutely disgusting and it pisses me off.
“Matt Damon walked the red carpet with his Chinese co-star, Jing Tian.”
By the way, it is well-known in China that Jing Tian is supposedly involved in a Chinese secret society which is the only reason why she got the part. They say she can’t act but they are trying to push her because of her status with the elite in China. Go figure.
“Who you know and who you blow.”
Yep!