Hollywood relies on China to stay afloat. What does that mean for movies?

[xizhimen]

Hollywood relies on China to stay afloat. What does that mean for movies?​

Fresh Air | By Terry Gross
Published February 21, 2022 at 8:00 AM CST

AFP Via Getty Images
Audience members sit separately for social distancing at a cinema in China's eastern Zhejiang province in July 2020.

Today's Hollywood blockbusters are specifically being crafted to appeal to Chinese audiences — and pass muster with the Chinese government — according to Wall Street Journal reporter Erich Schwartzel.

He highlights a few notable situations of product placement: In the 2014 film Transformers: Age of Extinction, Mark Wahlberg's character withdraws money from a China Construction Bank ATM — while in Texas. In another scene from the same film, a character buys Chinese protein powder at a Chicago convenience store.

And just 10 days after its release, Age of Extinction became the highest grossing film of all time in China. The movie has since been overtaken at the box office by a string of other blockbusters, but Schwartzel says its influence lingers.

Schwartzel has trained his eye to spot what he calls "Chinese elements" in movies: "You'll start to see it everywhere," he says. "I go to the movies now and I can see the Chinese cell phone — even if it's blurred in the frame."

In his new book, Red Carpet: Hollywood, China and the Global Battle for Cultural Supremacy, Schwartzel writes about China's growing influence on Hollywood. He contends that China has watched as Hollywood films helped sell America to the world — and it wants to do the same.

"As China has broadened its ambitions on the world stage and tried to become a bigger and bigger player in global politics, it has seen how culture can play a huge role in helping that effort," Schwartzel says.

China is already a powerhouse at the box office: In 2020, it overtook North America as the world's largest film market, and Schwartzel says that movie studios are increasingly reliant upon Chinese audiences to break even.

"It comes to the point where even on some of the biggest films that make tons of money around the world, like a Fast & Furious film or a Marvel superheroes movie, getting into China and making money there ... can mean the difference between profit and loss," he says.

But before a film can be shown in China, it must first get past Chinese government censors. And Schwartzel notes that the Chinese government has been quick to punish studios that take on topics it doesn't want the Chinese public to see or that it feels will make China look bad.

"No studio in Hollywood today would touch a movie that concerns a storyline involving the Uyghurs or Xinjiang or issues involving Taiwanese independence or demonstrations in Hong Kong," Schwartzel says. "Because of the economic muzzle that China has on the studios today, those things are just complete non-starters."

Hollywood relies on China to stay afloat. What does that mean for movies?

Wall Street Journal reporter Erich Schwartzel says that film studios increasingly need Chinese audiences to break even — which can result in self-censorship. His new book is Red Carpet.

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[Ravenman]

90% of movieproducers in Hollywood are jewish, thats why Germans or white caucasian males in the movies are bad, stupid, gay or the villain and blacks, hispanics and jews are the goodguys, superheroes, sexy, very smart and correct.

You will never see a WO II movie from a German point of view or a blockbustermovie about Barbarossa, Hannibal Barcas, Atilla the Hun, Djengiz Khan, but you can see thousands of anti-nazi warmovies.

With the coming fall of the dollar and breakup of the US in a north and south region, rich jews are moving with their money to China.

The Chinese elites dont care about the Opium Wars caused by the jewish Sassoon-family, they just care about money so they are glad to take the jews in. They make the same mistake like Sulaiman the Magnificent.