《好萊塢如何征服全世界：市場、戰略與影響》 到 《Red Carpet: Hollywood, China, and the Global Battle for Cultural Supremacy》 Book by Erich Schwartzel
Red Carpet: Hollywood, China, and the Global Battle for Cultural Supremacy
How China Used Hollywood To Build The World’s Biggest Film Market
Erich Schwartzel’s new book reveals how China censored Hollywood and took the industry’s best practices.
While watching Universal Pictures’ recent thriller “The 355,” Erich Schwartzel picked up on something that most viewers likely missed.
There is a scene -- a big shootout at the end -- that takes place in Shanghai. Just as the camera pans out, the Chinese police run in to restore order. “They need a moment where they show we’re here, you’re safe,” Schwartzel says. “The state has things completely under control.”
Schwartzel reports on the entertainment business for the Wall Street Journal, and has been writing about Hollywood’s relationship with China for the past several years. Schwartzel’s coverage has revealed how studios tailored their movies to please the Chinese government, and how Chinese companies hired some entertainment veterans to build up their own operations.
This exchange was mutually beneficial for a couple years, as U.S. blockbusters started making big money in China, while China became the fastest-growing film market in the world. But it didn’t take long for Hollywood’s self-censorship and pandering to look foolish. Hollywood’s share of Chinese ticket sales have plummeted in recent years, and now most studios are struggling to get a movie on the calendar.
The timing couldn’t be better for Schwartzel’s first book, “Red Carpet,” an exploration of Sino-Hollywood relations over the past 20 years. I spoke with him this past week about the book, recent tension in the relationship and his own reporting in the country.
When did Hollywood wake up to China’s potential as a movie market?
Around 2012-2013. Before that there were a couple moments that were wake-up calls, one of which was Avatar in 2009. When that made more than $200 million, that was a holy shi*t moment. In 2012, you had “Red Dawn” where a finished movie was changed because of China.
The next year 2013 is when you started to see some of the strategy take shape -- casting Li Bingbing in a movie or Chinese product placement.
How open was the Chinese market to Hollywood movies?
After 2012 it was pretty open because that was when the quota we renegotiated. China started allowing in 34 a year. That meant almost everyone got their biggest movies in.
It was obvious early on that China would censor movies. Did Hollywood not care, or did executives believe China would eventually loosen its restrictions?
A lot of times it was out of sight, out of mind. I would talk to executives who’d tell me things like… “We censor for all kinds of countries. We censor for airplanes. It’s something Hollywood has to do.”
The U.S. and China weren’t locked into this large macro rivalry. Censoring movies for economic reasons didn’t feel as political as it does today.
Were those arguments reasonable, or did China ask for more significant changes ?
China has a demand that other foreign markets don’t -- the ability to change movies elsewhere. China often requires Hollywood to change how movies are shown around the world. The examples in the 1990s are illuminating. None of those movies would be shown in China anyways. And yet China early on identified the power of Hollywood movies.
You write in your book about the many ideas that are obviously taboo, and then others that fall into a grey area. What are examples of both?
The really obviously off-limit stuff is portrayals of Chinese history that they don’t want to see. One of the reasons those Dalai Lama movies in the 1990s were so problematic is they were about Mao’s persecution of Tibet. It wasn’t just that they didn’t like valorization of the Dalai Lama but the stories required examination of a history that China doesn’t want to see on screen.
But then there are all these other murky topics and themes. There are so many rules that are said to be rules, and then China will make some exception. For the longest time there was a rule that time travel was not allowed. Then a Chinese movie released last year about a time traveling woman grossed like $900 million. No one can quite explain that.
What were the most egregious cases of altering a movie to please Chinese censors?
The ultimate case study was “Transformers: Age of Extinction.” This wasn’t in the book, but Paramount back then had a Chinese reality show competition where they cast four roles in the film. There is some very surreal YouTube footage of Megan Colligan judging this competition over in China. One-third of the movie is set in China or Hong Kong. It worked out quite well. It made more in China than it did in any other market.
Why is it a bad thing that Hollywood has altered its movies to gain entrance into China?
Making these concessions goes against the free expression Hollywood stands for. It also challenges this idea we’ve had since World War I that Hollywood would be the best advertisement for America possible. As China tries to export its movies and TV shows, it’s worth considering the values those will carry.
How would you assess the current quality of films made in China?
It’s certainly gotten more commercial. Within China, the audiences have responded to the country’s success with commercializing propaganda films and actually making pro-China narratives that are entertaining and fun to watch.
When I went to Kenya for the book, China still felt the need to pay to close the gap in appeal with American movies. A lot of villages in Kenya speak local languages; there are too few people to dub English language films into local dialects. Studios don’t see a purpose, so they subtitle. China stomachs the cost and will pay for that dubbing.
China wanted Hollywood to enter China in part so it could get its citizens to go to the movies. Why did China care if people went to the movies?
You go back to Mao and his thesis that all art should serve the state. That also explains why still to this day so much of Chinese movies is about messaging.
But then as China grew more capitalist it became an economic thing. All these cities were being built. All this development was being built. Movie theaters were begin constructed. They needed people to show up and buy tickets. American movies in the 1990s helped goose ticket sales for theaters that had to support broader real estate investments.
One of the big characters in your book, and of modern Hollywood, is Wang Jianlin, the long-time head of Dalian Wanda. How did he become the biggest player in the Chinese movie business?
Riding the wave of the Chinese middle class and building shopping malls to serve them. If you are in the business of shopping malls and living in a country with the largest internal migration to cities in human history, and what will soon became the world’s largest middle class, shopping malls are a good business.
A little under a decade ago, we saw this flood of money come into Hollywood. Which of those deals was the biggest head scratcher?
When the copper processing plant Xinke announced it was going to buy Voltage Pictures. They said at the time it was to guard against the softening of commodity prices. But Voltage was only known for “The Hurt Locker” and “Dallas Buyers Club” -- not movies Chinese audiences would embrace.
That, along with some of Wang Jianlin’s grandiosity, was what made Chinese leaders say we have to tap the brakes. This is clearly not about diversifying into a good revenue stream. It’s about getting money out of China.
If you are a Chinese entrepreneur and you see the collapse of Wanda, why do you even get involved in movies?
It’s such a balancing act. If you run a film studio, it’s fine to make commercial movies. But you better make patriotic films as well. If you look at the filmography of China’s biggest and top-ranked movie stars, they often have this well-calibrated balance between commerce and a party anniversary film.
China made a bet that its people wouldn’t care about repression or censorship if quality of life improved. It also bet that western movie studios would subject themselves to censorship if they got access to the market. It seems it was right on both counts. Did China get anything wrong?
No. I kinda feel like everything went almost according to plan.
When did you become interested in Hollywood’s relationship with China?
Right after I got the job covering Hollywood. I had to prepare a beat memo when I was applying for it. The first thing I said we should cover is China and China’s influence. I got interested in it around 2014. when I realized there was a political motivation behind a lot of this financing. It was not just dumb money.
Were Chinese executives wary of speaking with you?
Not as wary as you would think. There’s a real sense of pride in what China has pulled off.
What would it take for companies to stand up to China?
The companies are really out of step with public opinion. Public polling and political winds are shifting in a different direction than Western companies. Hollywood thinks it can duck and cover, but the thing that would really change the dynamic is if the shutting off to Hollywood movies keeps up. If it keeps up, there is no economic incentive to work with China.
What is the reason for the shut off?
It feels like one of final steps in China’s playbook with a lot of foreign partnerships – a replication and then replacement. That’s been happening for the past several years. But this past year has been particularly difficult and it’s hard to say why. China is turning inward.
Do Chinese executives feel like they don’t need Hollywood product anymore?
If you are running a theater in Beijing, you still want the Hollywood product. I’d be curious to see what is happening in terms of piracy for these movies. Are people finding other ways to see them? When the next Marvel movie gets into China, will this drought of release result in depressed enthusiasm for the overall franchise? — Lucas Shaw
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