on the universal appeal of the science-fiction
story—as well as the overall appeal of the G. I. Joe
franchise in toys, comic books, and cartoon series—
and filled out the cast with foreign stars. In addition
to such well-known American actors as Channing
Tatum, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Rachel Nichols, and
Dennis Quaid, the cast included Lee Byung-hun
Lee from Korea, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje and
Christopher Eccleston from the United Kingdom,
Karolína Kurková from the Czech Republic, Saïd
Taghmaoui from France, and Gerald Okamura
from Hawaii. It was a gamble that paid off, and G.I.
Joeearned slightly more abroad than at home. A
2012 sequel, G. I. Joe 2: Retaliation, will also feature
an international cast.
Foreign audiences for American movies are
growing. From Europe to Asia, there has been a
major increase in building movie theaters. In China,
for example, 35,000 new screens are scheduled to
open in the next five years. While the Chinese film
industry is thriving, it cannot produce enough movies
to fill the new screens; furthermore, American
movies, like Avatarand Alice in Wonderland, have
attracted large Chinese audiences. The IMAX Corpo-
ration has opened 66 theaters in the past three years,
25 of them in Asia, and is also taking the IMAX for-
mat on the road in portable theaters, erected under
movable domes, equipped with IMAX screens. There
has also been some discussion about creating differ-
ent releases of a single movie for different geographic
regions. Other major foreign markets for American
movies are in Russia, Japan, and South Korea.
While it’s too early to say whether foreign forces
will continue to have an impact on movie produc-
tion, it’s clear that in today’s global economy Holly-
wood will do whatever it can to sell the maximum
number of tickets to audiences abroad.
Maverick Producers and Directors
Hollywood has always had its maverick producers
and directors, people who refuse to conform to the
accepted way of making movies. Today’s most suc-
cessful maverick, independent producers are Scott
Rudin, Jerry Bruckheimer, and Brian Grazer.
Among directors, there is a do-it-yourself trend
exemplified by John Sayles and Robert Rodriguez,
both of whom work entirely outside the Hollywood
system. Sayles not only writes, directs, and edits
his films, but also finances them with income
earned as a scriptwriter and script doctor. His
films, which reflect a strong moral and political
sensibility, include Lone Star(1996) and Sunshine
State(2002). Rodriguez, who has his own studio in
Texas, produces, directs, and sometimes writes the
script as well as the musical score and does the
special effects. His films (e.g., Sin City, 2005, which
he codirected with Frank Miller, and Spy Kids,
2001) attract large audiences, garner solid critical
reviews, and are very profitable, but their semi-
improvised look reflects the fact that they are made
on comparatively low budgets and fast schedules.
Mel Gibson is another maverick director who does
it himself while overtly bucking the system. The
Passion of the Christ(2004), which he produced,
wrote, and directed, ranks twenty-eighth on the list
of all-time, worldwide box-office successes.
Other mavericks include Steve Buscemi, Francis
Ford Coppola, Spike Lee, George Lucas, and Martin
Scorsese, each of whom has long held considerable
control over the making of his films. Steven Soder-
bergh, who works inside the Hollywood system and
is responsible for such box-office hits as Haywire
and Contagion(both 2001), also experiments with
movies made and distributed outside the system,
such as Bubble(2005). In either mode, he produces
and directs, and he often shoots and edits his
movies as well. Many filmmakers working in other
countries, where Hollywood conventions are less
restrictive or nonexistent, flourish as mavericks.
Among them are Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc
Dardenne, French brothers who produced, wrote,
and directed the critically acclaimed, documen-
tary-style L’Enfant(2005); and Michael Haneke, the
German who wrote and directed Funny Games
(2007), a shot-for-shot English-language remake of
his own German-language horror film Funny Games
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