Epoch Times Commentary
Perspectives on the Pandemic: China’s Influence on Hollywood



Wang Jin
April 21, 2020. Updated April 21, 2020


Currently, there are over 730,000 cases of the CCP virus and over 160,000 deaths in the United States. Many of the high-profile cases were Hollywood celebrities.

Why would the CCP virus hit Hollywood hard?

The Epoch Times editorial article, “Where Ties With Communist China Are Close, the Coronavirus Follows,” suggests that “the heaviest-hit regions outside China all share a common thread: close or lucrative relations with the communist regime in Beijing.”

Chinese Regime Funds Hollywood’s Productions

More than half of the 10 best movies of 2019 selected by Time magazine were financed by Beijing-friendly firms, such as Tencent Pictures, Sunac Group, Shanghai Road Pictures Film and Television, Media Asia Film, and Bona Film Group.

Meanwhile, “Terminator: Dark Fate,” released in November last year, had an estimated production budget of $185 million with investment from Paramount Pictures, Skydance Media, 20th Century Fox at 30 percent each, as well as Tencent Pictures at 10 percent.

“Midway” was made with $80 million from Bona Film Group, accounting for 70 percent of the film’s budget.

Chinese conglomerate Fosun International invested in the founding of Studio 8, an American entertainment company, in 2014 and took part in the investment of movies such as “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk” and “Gemini Man.”

At the end of 2014, China’s largest interactive entertainment group Guangdong Alpha Group established a partnership with U.S. company New Regency Productions. It agreed to invest up to $60 million in three movies that New Regency would produce, including The Revenant.

The 2014 film “Transformers: Age of Extinction,” produced by Paramount, received investment from M1905, a new media subsidiary of the China Movie Channel (CCTV6).

Meanwhile, Alibaba Pictures, the Chinese film studio set up by e-commerce giant Alibaba, started its investment and marketing partnership with Paramount in 2015. Following collaboration on “Mission: Impossible—Rogue Nation,” it invested in two Paramount films, “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows” and “Star Trek Beyond.”

CCP influence also manifests through mergers and acquisitions with U.S. companies.

Buying Up Studios

Chinese conglomerate Dalian Wanda, acquired U.S. cinema operator AMC Entertainment for $2.6 billion in May 2012. In 2016, Wanda acquire Hollywood studio Legendary Entertainment and theater operator Carmike Cinemas. The former was the studio behind blockbusters like “Jurassic World” and “The Dark Knight.”

Dalian Wanda announced a strategic partnership with Motion Picture Group, the film unit of Sony Pictures Entertainment, on September 23, 2016.

Wang Jianlin, founder of Dalian Wanda, is a member of the Chinese Communist Party, and has been a delegate to the Party’s rubber-stamp legislature, the National People’s Congress.

Wang’s acquisitions, however, have Congress concerned about the regime’s growing influence in entertainment and view these acquisitions as CCP’s political outlets to spread propaganda and wield cultural influence over the way CCP is portrayed on American television and cinema.

On March 17, 2015, Lionsgate Entertainment entered into a multiyear deal with Chinese state-run broadcaster Hunan TV for co-financing, distribution, development, and production.

On April 1, 2015, Chinese film production company Huayi Brothers Media Corp. signed a three-year deal with Hollywood studio STX Entertainment to jointly finance, produce, and distribute up to 15 movies annually by 2016.

On September 20, 2015, China Media Capital (CMC) and Warner Bros. Entertainment announced a joint venture, Flagship Entertainment Group Limited, 51 percent owned by CMC and 49 percent by Warner Bros.

In January 2017, Paramount made a deal worth $1 billion in slate funds with Shanghai Film Group Corp. and Beijing-based Huahua Media. The two Chinese firms would fund 25 percent or more of the studio’s entire film slate for the next three years, with an option for a fourth, according to Deadline magazine.

However, Paramount announced in November that year that they ended the agreement following changes to Chinese foreign investment policies.

Chinese Market = Censorship

China’s box office cashed in $9 billion in 2018—just behind the United States and Canada, which brought in a total of $11.9 billion that year, according to data compiled by the Motion Picture Association of America.

By 2020, China will be the world’s largest cinema market, with box office revenue expected to jump from $9.9 billion in 2018 to $15.5 billion by 2023, according to a report by PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Experts have warned that China’s lucrative market has led to Hollywood’s self-censorship in order to cater to what Chinese censors want.

Timothy Doescher, associate director of coalition relations at the Heritage Foundation’s Institute for Economic Freedom, said: “Hollywood is relying more and more on the Chinese markets to make profits on movies. That means our films are being written with China in mind.”

Aynne Kokas, a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center, told the Financial Times: “You would be hard pressed to find a producer in Hollywood willing to make a film that portrays China negatively.”

Mike Gonzalez, a senior fellow at the Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy at The Heritage Foundation, explained why the Chinese regime has keyed in on Hollywood. “The Chinese Communist Party is communist, and the communists understand very well, then, the culture stands upstream from policy and from politics, and if you seize the culture, you’ve gone a great way towards impacting the population.”

On October 4, 2018, during a speech in which Vice President Mike Pence spoke of the administration’s new approach to U.S.-China relations, he criticized Beijing’s track record of “rewarding and coercing” American movie studios—which he said successfully resulted in plot revisions for films.

“‘World War Z’ had to cut the script’s mention of a virus originating in China. ‘Red Dawn’ was digitally edited to make the villains North Korean, not Chinese,” Pence said at the Hudson Institute.

He continued: “Beijing routinely demands that Hollywood portray China in a strictly positive light. It punishes studios and producers that don’t. Beijing’s censors are quick to edit or outlaw movies that criticize China, even in minor ways.”

Movies Banned by the CCP

Beijing hasn’t been shy about banning certain films that are too sensitive for the regime.

“Red Corner” was a 1997 film starring Richard Gere as an American businessman falsely accused of murder in Beijing. The film had an ominous tagline: “Leniency for those who confess, severity for those who resist.”

As a supporter of Tibetan independence and an ally of the Dalai Lama, Gere has been critical of the Chinese regime.

He said in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter that his political views have limited his work. “There are definitely movies that I can’t be in because the Chinese will say, ‘Not with him’.”

In a more recent example, the 2019 Netflix film “Laundromat” was banned. Directed by Steven Soderbergh and starring Meryl Streep, the movie exposes corruption, including in China.

One segment of the film portrays the state-sanctioned practice of forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience in China.

This global pandemic—caused by the Chinese regime’s mishandling of the outbreak–has demonstrated that dealing with China carries a heavy price.

Can Hollywood—long been stifled and shaped by China’s economic interests—wake up to the fact and distance itself from the Chinese regime in the future?

Only time will tell.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/perspectives-on-the-pandemic-chinas-influence-on-hollywood_3320631.html