While the focus of Hollywood and the world is now set on Russia and Ukraine, the lucrative and uneasy relationship between the American and Chinese film industries isn’t going away any time soon, nor will the challenge for studios on how to navigate it.
Wall Street Journal reporter Erich Schwartzel explores the past, present and future of that relationship in his new book, “Red Carpet: Hollywood, China and the Global Battle for Cultural Supremacy.” In it, he examines China’s rise in the 2010s to become a box office powerhouse so big that it’s able to influence creative decision-making for the biggest films in the world.
Of course, a lot has happened since Schwartzel’s finished his book. Last month, Chinese censors generated headlines for demanding a complete cut of the explosive ending of “Fight Club” from a home release in China … a change that was later reversed.
Meanwhile, comments made by “Shang-Chi” star Simu Liu and “Eternals” director Chloé Zhao years ago about the struggles of people living in China led to both films getting blocked from theatrical release, and global box office smash hit “Spider-Man: No Way Home” also got the ax. While recent non-Marvel blockbusters like “The Batman” and “Uncharted” have been approved for release, the push by Chinese officials to put more emphasis on local hits like “The Battle at Lake Changjin” has left Hollywood executives trying to figure out where their films belong in a Chinese market less reliant on them.
In an interview with TheWrap, Schwartzel discussed his research into China’s influence on Hollywood, his thoughts on the recent developments unfolding between the two sides, and whether the Marvel backlash could have a chilling effect on Chinese expats who might get the opportunity to become the next Chloé Zhao or Simu Liu.
The interview has been edited for clarity and length.
When it comes to Chinese censorship of movies, a lot of Americans are probably familiar with certain clips of Hollywood films being cut out to appeal to the Chinese film board. But in “Red Carpet” you point out that the censorship influence can impact the filmmaking process as it’s happening. What’s an example that you found during your research?
You’re drawing a key distinction here, which is that a lot of countries censor movies before they’re shown but China’s the only one that is powerful enough to change movies shown anywhere. In “Transformers: Age of Extinction” in 2014, there’s a scene where the Beijing defense authorities come to the rescue of Hong Kong before the Americans do. And that was a scene that was added at the request of Chinese authorities.
And interestingly, to your question, when Paramount executives would go to China before that film came out, the authorities there would routinely ask them, “Is there only going to be one cut of this film?” Because they wanted that scene to be shown around the world, not just in China. So there’s been this very deliberate effort to make sure that there’s only one version of a movie. And it’s the China-approved one.
If there’s a certain franchise film that the studio knows could play well in China, is there pressure on the director to make such decisions to cater to that?
It depends if a movie is put into production at a certain budget level and the plan — at least as far as they can control it — is to play in China. Then during the filmmaking process, there might be some changes made to try and boost appeal.
This is where you start to see casting decisions being made, like Chinese actors being cast or scenes being set in China. I mean, this really happened to a more pronounced degree several years ago, but it still happens today. There’s still major franchise films that are that are making decisions in casting certain people and filming scenes in certain places to try to appeal to the Chinese market. But I think at this point the scripts themselves can be read with a lens on that; that lets the studio executive say, “Hey, you know, let’s not even shoot this scene as it’s written, because it might might prove a problem later.”
Chloé Zhao and Simu Liu were two of the biggest breakout Hollywood names of 2021 because of “Nomadland” and “Shang-Chi,” but “Shang-Chi” and Zhao’s “Eternals” got shut out of China because of the comments they made years ago about living there. Do you think that will have a chilling effect on how Hollywood hires Chinese expat actors and filmmakers for major projects?
Yeah, I think they’ll have to and and you’re absolutely right. There’s this irony that I’m sure both of those hiring decisions were made in part because they thought it would help in China. Chloé Zhao was exalted in China before those comments were unearthed, and with “Shang-Chi,” obviously, they needed to hire an Asian actor, but the greenlighting of that movie to begin with was something of a China play.
The comments that were unearthed were so old and, frankly, relatively innocuous and obscure, that I wonder if studios will have to start doing more extensive [opposition] research on people they want to hire with ties to China. Or do they say, “Look, there’s never going to be a way for us to anticipate what China will take an issue with. So let’s just avoid such hires altogether?” A lot of the executives making these decisions will view the risk on these hires as just getting higher and higher because of China’s aggressive response.
Beyond Marvel, Disney had a massive misfire with the “Mulan” remake, which got panned on social media in China. But at the same time, it was just a few years ago that Disney found huge success in China with “Zootopia” and “Coco,” the latter of which was designed to appeal to Mexican moviegoers but won over China because of its theme of honoring the dead. Given that trend, do you think Hollywood may soon just give up trying to make global tentpoles that specifically cater — or so they think — to Chinese audiences?
That’s the lesson that some of the most observant executives have learned. For a while, the studio’s efforts to bend over backwards to appeal to Chinese audiences did bear some fruit, like “Transformers” did particularly well.
But then as China’s own movies got better and more sophisticated and more commercial, audiences started to prefer them. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise, but I think it did. And, and so by the time something like that live-action “Mulan” came out, Chinese audiences rejected it because they have China’s version of these stories now. Would we expect American audiences to go see a Chinese version of Davy Crockett?
What they do like from Hollywood are things they can’t get anywhere else, which are, as you said, the big global films, or these movies like “Zootopia” that aren’t made with China in mind, but nonetheless, have a cross-cultural resonance.
On the business side, Legendary recently announced that it did an equity stake sale that allows it to get back operational control from Dalian Wanda. Has the era of American-Chinese showbiz partnerships come to an end?
Well, Legendary was really one of the last deals standing. A lot of them had either dissolved or not really come to fruition. Six years ago, or maybe even seven or eight, it was a crazy fire sale, like everybody was chasing Chinese money. Now, it’s really settled down and I think Wanda has gotten out in a pretty significant way with this Legendary deal.
The only deals we’re still seeing are things like Alibaba taking a small stake in Amblin, or these slight financing deals with studios like Perfect World and Universal, but that’s kind of it. I think Hollywood learned the hard way that there’s money to be made in China, but it’s always much more on the box office side than on the financing side.
The biggest mystery for Hollywood is why “Spider-Man: No Way Home” wasn’t greenlit for release in China. What do you think was the reason why?
It’s so hard to know. There’s so many theories out there, but we never we never get a memo from Beijing saying why. I have to imagine that the Chinese theater owners certainly would have liked it to. I think, though, that last year China took a very inward turn. Any time the country’s leadership decides that they want their people to be more nationalist or more patriotic, one thing they do is they control the amount of Western influence into the country. But why that specifically means “Spider-Man” doesn’t get in but “Dune” does is hard to say.
Films like “Hi, Mom” and “The Battle at Lake Changjin” have been shattering box office records, but there were still months-long dry spells for theaters in China. Even as the box office becomes less reliant on Hollywood imports, will they still be needed to fill in those gaps between locally made tentpoles?
Probably. The reason that American movies started flowing into China at all was because the Chinese theaters were struggling so much to stay in business in the ‘90s. And so, the Hollywood movies have always kind of functioned as these stimulus programs. You know, I’ve even heard distributors talking about wanting to release movies earlier in the year because they have a better chance of getting into China, because it’s not until the last couple months where they’re looking at the box office charts and thinking, “Oh, Americans are taking up too much of the box office.”
As you mentioned, there had been a lot of pride in China that Chloé Zhao had earned all this acclaim for “Nomadland” prior to her comments being dug up, and Xi Jinping’s desire to host the Winter Olympics shows he puts value in the soft power of entertainment. While so much has been written about what Hollywood is getting from China financially, is that ability to foster its image to the world what China gets out of the deal?
Yeah, absolutely. Over the past decade, it’s gotten quite a bit of know-how, and it has been that exposure to Hollywood has helped to build its own entertainment industry; but it’s also ensured that while China takes this larger geopolitical rise that the most powerful global medium will not ever criticize it or explore that rise with any real complexity. It’s ensured that Hollywood will never promote anything that China doesn’t agree with.
The Chloé Zhao thing is interesting, though, because there was this amazing potential bit of soft power to have a Chinese-born filmmaker on the cusp of winning an Oscar. But then whenever the crackdown happened, it proved that especially in today’s China, politics will always trump that reputational game.