The Chinese red carpet was torn from under the feet of Hollywood
With Trump in the White House, China has taken a new approach to cinema relations with the United States, and now it’s the United States and the big Hollywood industry that must find an alternative way to lose that big market.
Theater News Base: Warner Bros., in connection with its “Space Chaos” starring basketball superstar LeBron James, tried its best to attract China, which has the world’s largest film market, but ultimately failed to release the film in China, resulting in sales. The total reached 162.8 million, which is a normal figure.
Disney also tried to make a splash in China this year with huge films such as “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” and “The Eternals,” which especially used a lot of Chinese talent, but faced the same situation.
In fact, 2021 may be the year that the relationship between Hollywood and China is finally collapsing.
“Obviously a lot of geopolitical issues have arisen with the change of government, and we have to see what the new relationship with Biden’s government will be like, but it is clear that China is building its own film business,” said Anne Sarnov, managing director of Warner Media Studios. The cinematic figures of this country are huge and we would like to believe that we are going to be a big part of their future, but to be honest, we are only moving forward with each film, and I can not make big predictions because I do not know what the situation will be.
Last year, the situation in Hollywood in China accelerated rapidly. In 2021, only 25 American films were allowed to be released in the country, many of which were small independent films, and the huge blockbusters of large studios were less seen. In 2019, the number of Hollywood movies was 45.
All of this has led big studios to partially abandon their big ambitions for China as diplomatic relations between China and the United States have deteriorated so much that it no longer matters how much Hollywood tries to adapt to the Chinese market. Xi Jinping’s era is likely to have less room for Western cultural content.
Although China has managed to keep Covid-19 cases close to zero, the movie market has not yet returned to its peak. As of December 13, China’s total box office revenue was $ 7.05 billion, down 26.2 percent from the $ 9.56 billion high in 2019.
The important point is that when cinemas needed to increase sales in the past, legislators screened a number of Hollywood films, and it was even possible to screen more than 34 films that Beijing had to show under its previous commercial contract, and this is what is happening this year. Did not fall. Instead, many lucrative Hollywood titles have been dropped, including “Black Widow,” “Venom,” and now perhaps even “Spider-Man: No Way Home.”
At the same time, the US plan to boycott the Beijing Winter Olympics diplomatically is expected to increase China’s growing opposition to US cultural exports. We need to see what Hollywood plans to do in the future to compensate for its losses in the Chinese market and gain more international audiences.