Movies

Has China fallen out of love with Hollywood movies? Soul-searching continues as Fast & Furious 9 underperforms at box office


The gap between box office takings for the highest-grossing domestic Chinese and Hollywood films is also widening. In 2015, the discrepancy was negligible when Hollywood box office champion Fast & Furious 7 took 2.4 billion yuan, the same as that chalked up by , China’s highest-grossing domestic film that year. So far in 2021, the highest-grossing domestic film is , which took in 3.8 billion yuan, more than three times that of Fast & Furious 9.

Jia Ling (right) and Zhang Xiaofei in a still from Hi, Mom.

Jia Ling (right) and Zhang Xiaofei in a still from Hi, Mom.

Li Jun, director of 2019 film Hunt Down, tells the Post at the Shanghai International Film Festival that Chinese audiences are bored with the repetition of Hollywood movies and incessant extension of franchises. “People get bored when Fast and Furious is in the ninth instalment,” he says.

“When it first came out [in 2001], people had never seen things like a car hurtling out of a plane. People loved Hollywood before for the good stories and genre films. When it keeps churning out similar fare, audiences leave.”

Other Hollywood franchises are also pulling in much smaller Chinese audiences. While Transformers’ fourth instalment took in 1.9 billion yuan in China and was the box office champion in 2014, the fifth instalment, 

Transformers: The Last Knight

– was ranked only sixth, and took 500 million yuan less than the previous movie when it was released in 2017.

Bumblebee fights off a Sentinel in a still from Transformers: The Last Knight (2017).

Bumblebee fights off a Sentinel in a still from Transformers: The Last Knight (2017).

China’s love affair with Hollywood started in 1994 when the mainland government allowed the import of 10 overseas movies each year. The Fugitive, starring Harrison Ford, was the first Hollywood import, arriving in six trial cities in China, including Beijing and Tianjin, in 1994. In spite of being screened for only seven days, it easily made 25 million yuan in box office takings, the highest that year.

In 1995 True Lies, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, was screened across China, reaping a record-breaking 102 million yuan, even without the sea of publicity that usually accompanies today’s Hollywood releases.

The individual heroism, sexy scenes and bloody fights portrayed in The Fugitive and True Lies were a far cry from the edifying domestic fare, which was intended more to educate than entertain the audience.

Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet in a still from Titanic (1997).

Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet in a still from Titanic (1997).

In 1998, Titanic, based on the historical sinking of the eponymous doomed passenger liner, took a whopping 350 million yuan, with a scalped ticket to the film selling for several hundred yuan. In 2001, with China’s entry to the World Trade Organisation, the overseas film import quota rose from 10 to 20, with Hollywood films making up most of the quota year after year. In 2010, Avatar became the first film to take in over a billion yuan, earning 1.35 billion yuan. Franchise movies like Harry Potter and the James Bond series reigned supreme for more than a decade. 

Li Jun says another reason for China’s waning love for Hollywood has to do with the rising production values of local films. “Domestic films’ special effects are done by international companies, including those from Korea and Hollywood. The domestic special effects companies are also composed of many overseas talents.”

Li Jun, director of Infinite Depth, at the Shanghai International Film Festival. Photo: SIFF

Li Jun, director of Infinite Depth, at the Shanghai International Film Festival. Photo: SIFF

Li cites as an example Infinite Depth, a disaster movie directed by him and to be released in summer, which has 1,600 special-effects shots. “While I can’t say how much it cost to make the movie, it’s the most expensive film I have ever made,” he says. “There’s a scene of a car chase when humans have to outrun a natural disaster. We need around 10 cars, which keep getting damaged.”

Infinite Depth was made in Guizhou province in an area with many deep underground caves. “One of the caves we shot the movie in is the longest in Asia, at 280 kilometres. The cave went all the way to Chongqing. The film crew had to be lowered several tens of metres underground to make the film. We have recruited speleologists and psychologists to provide counselling for the crew, as many unforeseen circumstances like a precipitous drop in temperature can happen so deep underground.”

Jeff Bock, box office analyst at Exhibitor Relations, says Hollywood movies lagging far behind mainland films in China’s box office will continue far into the future. “The Chinese productions right now are some of the best works that have ever come out of China in terms of reaching mass audiences. There’s a lot of innovation [in them].”

China’s first science fiction movie Wandering Earth was an unexpected box office success. Photo: Simon Song

China’s first science fiction movie Wandering Earth was an unexpected box office success. Photo: Simon Song

“It’s a difficult situation for Hollywood,” he adds, “because they so wanted to tap into the Chinese market on a consistent basis.”

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