Strategy+Business – August 2019

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historical drama that I produced in 2017, The Jade Pendant, used CGI to recreate

Los Angeles in 1871 and locomotives from the transcontinental railroad. But most

recently, in the tentpole category, the Chinese audience turned out in force for The

Wandering Earth, a futuristic space odyssey about Chinese astronauts sent out to

save the planet from destruction. It’s a film that looks, sounds, and plays as well

as Gravity, First Man, Apollo 13, or any other Hollywood space drama. And it’s

already earned close to $700 million since its release in February 2019.

In short, China and India are now making their own tentpoles. This means

that Hollywood no longer has the monopoly on the kinds of movies that have

been the lifeblood of the American film business. This isn’t to say Hollywood

blockbusters won’t continue to attract big audiences in China, or internationally.

Some of them will. (Black Panther, for example, earned almost half its money

overseas, and grossed over $100 million in China. Beyond the artistic achieve-

ment, it could be viewed as a parable for modern China itself, as the story of an

ancient but emerging nation with vast riches and technological prowess trying

to find its place in the world.) But going forward, these Hollywood films will be

competing for viewers and their money with local alternatives using local stars,

the local cultural aesthetic, and, probably sooner rather than later, a local pha-

lanx of mythological heroes.

It doesn’t mean much to boast “We know how to make big movies” when

everyone can. And we may already be seeing the implications of this at the Chi-

nese box office: In 2018, the U.S. share of the Chinese box office was off by 24

percent. As Rance Pow, CEO of the Chinese film consultancy Artisan Gateway,

explained to a group of filmmakers in Los Angeles, while overall ticket sales

increased, “Most of that success is weighted in major Chinese-language films.

Which means that Chinese tastes in film, and what sells big tickets, is becoming

more and more local.” Even Netflix has recognized this, and has opened satellite

offices in Asia and Europe to buy and produce high-quality local content that

will appeal to local audiences.

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