Why Hollywood movie talents are making a beeline for China
LOS ANGELES: Instead of Chinese stars heading for Hollywood, the biggest stars of Hollywood are making a beeline for China.
Once the biggest stars of the Chinese-language industry — from Bruce Lee to Jackie Chan, John Woo to Ang Lee — went west to bring their careers to the next level, moving from the relative backwater of their home territories to the much larger industry pond of Southern California. Now it’s much more common to see Hollywood talent head east, seeking opportunity in Beijing’s booming film business.
For a timely example, look no further than ‘Animal World’, the colourful, youth-oriented thriller from Beijing-based studio Enlight Media currently on top of China’s box office. The film, an adaptation of a Japanese comic book, opened to US$38 million over the weekend, kicking off China’s summer blockbuster season.
The film features two-time Oscar winner Michael Douglas deploying his signature menace as the mysterious villain, an overseer in an elaborate underground game of chance. Chinese critics have heaped praise on the 73-year-old American actor’s performance.
But Douglas isn’t the only Hollywood star willing to play a supporting role in the Chinese movie boom. Michael Pitt (‘Boardwalk Empire’, ‘The Dreamers’) popped up earlier this year in Wanda Pictures’ smash hit comedy ‘Detective Chinatown 2’, which grossed US$544 million in the Middle Kingdom. Marvel Studios’ alum Frank Grillo (‘Captain America: Civil War’) played the Western baddy in ‘Wolf Warrior 2’, China’s biggest blockbuster ever (US$870 million). And, later this summer, Bruce Willis and Adrian Brody will appear as US military brass in ‘Unbreakable Spirit’, a China Film Group-produced movie about the Japanese bombing of the Chinese city of Chongqing during World War II.
Hollywood stars have appeared in big Chinese-themed films before — most notably Christian Bale in Zhang Yimou’s period action-drama ‘Flowers of War’ and Matt Damon in Legendary Entertainment’s now-legendary flop, ‘The Great Wall’. But in those films, both US-China co-productions initiated by American producers in the hopes of bridging the world’s two biggest markets, the Hollywood casting was justified as a necessary ingredient to help the films win an audience outside of China. In the new wave of crossover castings, the blockbusters are targeting Chinese audiences exclusively, with US stars picked for their skills or their appeal to fans in Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou.
“Bringing foreign actors onto Chinese films now is generally more about raising the production quality for domestic performance,” says Jonah Greenberg, former head of CAA China, who recently launched his own production company in Beijing.