The Wall Street Journal chronicled this trend last year, citing the addition of recognizable Chinese actors to the casts of films like X-Men: Days of Future Past and Now You See Me 2, the latter of which quadrupled the Chinese box office of the original, in part because of the presence of Taiwanese performer Jay Chou in the cast. For preexisting properties, studios have begun dropping Chinese performers of note into roles they likely would not have been pursued for otherwise. This hound-dogging for yuan has taken on many forms.
This naturally kick-started a wave of American corporate interest, and also a torrent of conglomerate strategizing by the major studios and production companies working to conquer China. In the ensuing years, hundreds of theaters have been built, and the nation has fallen in love with, even become consumed by, the movies. It’s because China has been a major movie market for only about seven years, when the country (which comprises 1.35 billion people) flocked to James Cameron’s Avatar, and in the process spiked the yearly box office gross by 61 percent over the previous year. But this is misleading, and not just because The Great Wall cost more than $150 million to produce, before marketing costs are factored in. The Great Wall was released in China last December to strong but not outrageous success - it is already the 20th-highest-grossing movie in Chinese history, raking in 1.17 billion yuan, or approximately $170 million, in less than three months.
Movies Aren’t Dead, but They’ll Never Be the Same The Great Wall is a kind of summation of five years of shifting priorities, marshaling all the forces of modern movie production as well as some of its tropes - notably, a white male lead with a proven international track record (Damon), a director familiar with working on a big canvas (China’s Oscar-nominated Zhang Yimou), extended action sequences, snarling monsters, and a wisecracking sidekick ( Game of Thrones’ Pedro Pascal). Over time, the power of stardom has waned in favor of IP, but the necessity of international might hasn’t changed at all - it has only become more vital to Hollywood’s bottom line. Think of all those globetrotting Tom Cruise press tours. In the decade that preceded this one, it was not uncommon to hear a movie star’s bankability overseas discussed casually in the trades, Entertainment Weekly, or box office reports. Today, Hollywood is focused on deep 3s (big-ticket 3-D action films based on preexisting intellectual property, animated kids’ movies) and high-percentage close-range shots (micro-moneyed horror, demographically targeted comedy, boutique drama). There has been, in the past decade, enormous anxiety about the state of the business, largely focused on the hollowing out of the industry’s “middle” - the modestly budgeted mainstream picture (rom-coms star-driven comedies thrillers) - in favor of a Mike D’Antoni–esque plan of action. Streaming services, smartphones, and a thrashing political climate have diminished the primacy of movies. Conversely, things have been less stable or predictable in the United States. In the past few years, China has experienced unprecedented box office success. That is a rising tide lifting a sinking boat. The reason for that is clear: All data compiled from This sort of binational, multi-corporate, world-blanketing, blockbuster moviemaking plan is becoming de rigeur. The Great Wall was financed and produced as a collaboration among four enterprises: the U.S.-based, Chinese-owned Legendary Entertainment the Chinese-based production house Le Vision Pictures longtime American film producer Charles Roven’s company, Atlas Entertainment and the state-owned China Film Group.
It is also, in its strange way, a perfect metaphor for how the American movie industry has acted toward China in recent times, like a rampaging beast questing for prosperity on the other side of the wall. This is, roughly, the story of the new movie The Great Wall, which was released stateside Friday.
Manning the wall are hundreds of gifted soldiers - countrymen and women with extraordinary training, gymnastic ability, and an expert strategy. Behind the wall lies the imperial court of the Song dynasty, enormous wealth, and a new future. According to legend, these creatures - an unholy and cosmic manifestation of greed - are surging with a mission: to breach the last line of defense between the vast wilderness from whence they came and the lavish empire of China. It is shortly after the turn of the first millennium, and hurtling toward the Great Wall with a fury are several thousand green-skinned, green-blooded reptilian monsters.