Hollywood’s former dominance of the Chinese box office is no more, with the communist nation’s own films overtaking a majority share of the market under policies by the regime that promote domestic films over foreign ones.
The share of American-made movies in China’s box office receipts has fallen to under 10%, the result of Beijing’s decision to block major Hollywood films from playing in Chinese movie theaters while bolstering movies produced by the country’s own studios.
Given that China has overtaken the United States as the world’s largest movie market, this spells trouble for the Hollywood movie mills. Ironically, the bad news for Hollywood comes even though American studios have recently made striking alterations to their films to please Chinese censors.
As an example, when the trailer for the upcoming Top Gun: Maverick was released last year, audiences noticed that the Taiwanese and Japanese patches missing from the jacket of Tom Cruise’s legendary character.
Why? In order to please the communist Chinese government and get their film into the market, the studio had to omit such references to two of Beijing’s territorial rivals.
And as film blogger Alex Hollings observes:
The 2012 remake of “Red Dawn” was, for most of us, a real disappointment. The beloved original depicted desperate teenagers fighting an enemy invasion in a very personal way — forgoing flag-waving patriotism for an understated kind many service members can truly appreciate: a quiet but steady resolve to protect one’s home. The remake lacked that insight… as well as a believable villain. The idea that North Korea could render American defenses useless and capture a large portion of the U.S. mainland seems laughable… but then, it was never supposed to be the North Koreans in the first place. The entire movie was filmed using China as the invaders.
After Chinese media voiced concerns about their nation’s depiction in the film, the studio panicked and hired not one, but five special effects companies to remove any sign that the invading force was Chinese, replacing all flags with North Korean ones.
But Hollywood’s efforts to get on the good side of the CCP have not performed well. Hollywood’s share of the China box office market has plummeted to just 9.5% so far this year, per data from consultancy group Artisan Gateway.
A decade ago, Hollywood held 8 of the 10 spots among China’s top-grossing movies. But in 2019 and 2020, that number went down to two per year. Last year, the lucky reels were Tenet and The Croods: A New Age. In 2019, only Avengers: Endgame and Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw saw success.
Breitbart notes:
Chinese audiences are instead gravitating toward home-grown movies in larger numbers, lifting the time-traveling comedy Hi, Mom and the buddy-cop adventure Detective Chinatown 3 to blockbuster status. Meanwhile, recent Hollywood titles like Disney-Pixar’s Luca and Disney’s Raya and the Last Dragon have failed to resonate with local audiences.
Even Universal’s dependable Fast & Furious franchise, which has been enormously popular in China, is showing signs of fatigue. The latest installment, F9, saw its China grosses plummet in the second week by a stunning 85 percent.
One way China is asserting greater control of its movie market is by blocking the release of American films. Disney has not enjoyed a Chinese release of any Marvel film since Avengers: Endgame. Other major pictures like Disney’s Jungle Cruise and Warner Bros.’ The Suicide Squad likewise have failed to get a release in China so far.
With a complete lack of self-awareness, Hollywood continually lashes out at traditional American values and asserts its “right” to promote anti-American and anti-Christian content, but has no qualms about censoring itself for the sake of the communists in Beijing.
And while China works to keep the U.S. out of its film market, America continues to say “yes” to a growing Chinese presence in our economy.
Recently, the Biden government recently gave Chinese telecom behemoth Huawei entry into the U.S. auto industry after President Trump rejected the advance. Officials at the Department of Commerce under Biden approved applications worth hundreds of millions of dollars to Huawei in order to purchase the chips for its auto business. Perhaps not surprisingly, Biden selected (and the Senate confirmed) Chris Fonzone, an attorney who worked as a lobbyist for Huawei, as the top lawyer in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
Tragicomic; fitting, given the subject.
