AMC Cinemas
“There’s a tremendous amount of capital ready to finance these types of co-productions, [in The Great Wall’s case] and with all those talented writers, the producers needed to ask themselves that if audience has seen this before and how can they temporarily forget this fact,” Phillips adds.
“I think part of the problem has nothing to do with the Chinese-American financial alliances — it’s just that we are inhibited by this sort of digital effects fantasies in all sorts of stories every month now. [The movies] have a very hard time looking distinctive — they just look like the last five you’ve already seen,” he says.
“There is no pre-defined set of requirements that I know of. It’s basically common sense, based on a sense of what’s entertaining for both Chinese and global markets,” Ken Atchity, a veteran literary manager and Hollywood producer of films Life or Something Like It (starring Angelina Jolie) and Hysteria (Maggie Gyllenhaal), replies via email.
“[Film] development for China financing needs to be selective,” he writes. “Not everything works. Yes, having at least one Asian [preferably Chinese] talent element is good as we did for MEG which is now in post-production.”
MEG, an adaptation of Steve Alten’s 1997 novel about a monster shark, is directed by Jon Turteltaub (National Treasure), co-financed by three Chinese companies and distributed by Warner Bros. The movie stars Jason Statham, Ruby Rose and Li Bingbing.
A report by China Film Insider confirms that the adaptation “swapped out [the] California location for a Chinese coastline setting [and the change helped] bring China’s Gravity Pictures on as a co-producer and co-financier.”
Despite critical and aesthetic compromises already raising bumps in the road, Hollywood-China co-productions still have one more hurdle in its path: the US government’s anti-China policy.
“I don’t think there’s enough organisation on the government-versus-Hollywood front to make a dent in Hollywood’s sheer power to attract worldwide audiences. That power is based on audience demand and the worldwide audience is not demanding what the US government is thinking right now, or feeling, or tweeting,” replies Atchity via email.
Compared to Hollywood’s perpetually enthusiastic stance with international financiers — and its eternal outcry against the government — this issue seems to be a minor inconvenience. Any organisation or industry in the world loves money, especially if it’s free-flowing your way with slight caveats.
Published in Dawn, ICON, April 16th, 2017