Advertisement
Newsletter
Last year, no American movie broke the Top 10 at the Chinese box office.
“Barbenheimer” — the portmanteau given to the same-day release of “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” last summer — was a genuine cultural phenomenon for much of the world. Cinemas were filled with outfits in various hues of pink. Social media frothed with opinions. And the films brought in a combined $2.3 billion globally.
The “Barbenheimer” story played out differently in China, though. Neither movie cracked the nation’s top 30 releases last year. In fact, as my colleagues Claire Fu, Brooks Barnes and Daisuke Wakabayashi have reported, it was a bad year for all of Hollywood at the Chinese box office, where no American movie broke the list of top 10 highest-grossing movies.
The numbers must be chastening for Hollywood studios; China has often been a salve for declining domestic revenues. In 2012, seven of the top 10 releases in China were American, and Chinese companies were soon investing billions of dollars in U.S. entertainment. Studios went out of their way to appease the Chinese market, amending scripts for censors and shoehorning in Chinese product placements.
In the past few years, though, as tensions grew between the countries’ governments, China began to look inward. It invested in domestic filmmakers and filmmaking technologies like C.G.I., Claire Fu told me. And it began the construction of thousands of new movie screens, in part to expand the reach of movies that “exhibit the Chinese national spirit,” officials said. This investment appears to be paying off — the top grossing films last year were Chinese-made productions like “The Wandering Earth II,” a sci-fi movie heavy on special effects and themes of collectivism.
Chinese audiences are shunning Hollywood for domestic film options that are improving in quality, and reflect their own societal issues and values. “Chinese films have the content that Chinese audiences can relate to, culturally and emotionally,” Claire told me. Examples include “No More Bets,” based on a real-life scam in which people were kidnapped and forced to work online fraud jobs in Southeast Asia, and “The Battle at Lake Changjin,” the country’s top-grossing movie of all time, about a Chinese triumph over the U.S. during the Korean War.
Hannah Li, a 27-year-old Marvel die-hard who grew up watching Western movies, told Claire that Hollywood needs to change its approach if it wants to succeed in China. “If you don’t want to get off your high horse to see what we like, then it’s natural that you will be washed-out,” Hannah said.
We are having trouble retrieving the article content.
Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access.
Already a subscriber? Log in.
Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Advertisement
Has Hollywood Lost China? – The New York Times
Leave a comment