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The Hollywood dazzle came courtesy of Marvel mainstays Joe and Anthony Russo (the duo is at work on the next Avengers film), who consulted on the project via a deal with Beijing Culture. Hollywood and China: How to Push a Deal to Actually Close

The film blends a story of emphatically Chinese patriotic appeal - the tagline: “Whoever attacks China will be killed no matter how far the target is” - with a level of action-flick proficiency previously unseen. “Now we are taking a more targeted approach and thinking more strategically about how we collaborate.”Īction star Wu Jing’s smash hit Wolf Warrior 2, which Song’s Beijing Culture co-produced, could be the box-office phenomenon that launches the new model. “In the past, many tried to co-produce a film that can work in all markets, but it is very difficult to bridge Chinese and Western cultures,” says Song Ge, chairman of Beijing Culture Media, currently one of the hottest studios in Beijing. So while the studios struggle to adapt to China’s new regulatory environment, other players are beginning to put forward promising solutions to the challenge of how the two culturally distinct industries can come together to produce commercially successful content. “The current restrictions have caused some companies to drop out, but I don’t think that’s a bad thing for the cooperation between China and Hollywood because those left in the market will be people who want to cooperate on producing good films rather than money speculators,” adds Wang. “The recent activity gave Hollywood the misunderstanding that China has only two things to contribute: money and the market.”ĭrunk on the allure of China’s fast and easy cash, the thinking goes, Hollywood studios and prominent independents had grown distracted by dreams of fast exits at high multiples or generously structured slate financing deals - neither of which were ultimately sustainable. “In general, we had gone backward regarding how we cooperate,” says James Wang, CEO of Huayi Brothers Entertainment. This sent Hollywood’s moneymen and moneywomen into the paroxysm of hand-wringing that has yet to fully subside.īut if you ask the Chinese industry’s top film executives what they make of the clampdown and its aftermath, most will contend that the regulators did both sides a favor - and they aren’t just toeing the political line. The big-ticket Hollywood deals were quick to fall: Wanda’s $1 billion purchase of Dick Clark Productions, Huahua Media’s $1 billion investment at Paramount, $345 million for Voltage Pictures, Avi Lerner’s $100 million sale of Millennium to China’s Recon Group - all of them dead. All they had to do was take his money - and it was easy to believe him: He had paid $3.5 billion for Legendary Entertainment in a January 2016 deal that came shortly after fellow conglomerate Fosun bankrolled Jeff Robinov’s Studio 8 and Jack Ma’s Alibaba Group injected millions into Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment.īut then the unthinkable happened: Beijing regulators turned off the tap, ordering state banks to stop financing the conglomerates’ overseas buying sprees and labeling the entertainment sector an officially restricted industry for outbound investment.

And China’s then-richest man, Wang Jianlin, was swooping into Los Angeles aboard his Gulfstream 550 to boast about plans to inject billions into the slates of all six major U.S.

At the time, every major studio, save Disney, had a Chinese financier or joint-venture relationship in place - or else was scurrying to secure one.

“The way we see things, this has only been the beginning.”Īnd yet, the landscape couldn’t have looked more different a year ago, when China was a major presence in Tinseltown and anyone with a bold-faced name and a little international savvy was set to get rich. “I can understand some of the fatigue, but it’s a much bigger and more exciting opportunity than what are looking at,” says Greenberg. Still, industry leaders closest to the Chinese market caution that not only is the temptation to disengage misguided - for what globally minded entertainment concern can afford to spurn the world’s soon-to-be-biggest market? - but the gloomy prognostication about the boom cycle’s early demise also has obscured the subtle and ultimately more important signs that the two industries have been evolving toward a more sustainable and mutually beneficial footing. entertainment industry exploded from $1.13 billion in 2015 to $4.78 billion last year but it has plunged 90 percent in 2017, totaling just $489 million as of Sept. On some level, Hollywood’s hot-and-cold attitude toward the Middle Kingdom is easy to understand - it closely tracks one of the key underlying economic realities.

Foreigner challenge original video twitter