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which were ultimately sustainable. “The current restrictions have caused some companies to drop out, but I don’t think that’s a bad thing for the cooperation between China and Hollywood because those left in the market will be people who want to cooperate on producing good films rather than money speculators,” adds Wang.

So while the studios struggle to adapt to China’s new regulatory environment, other players are beginning to put forward promising solutions to the challenge of how the two culturally distinct industries can come together to produce commercially successful content.

“In the past, many tried to coproduce a film that can work in all markets, but it is very difficult to bridge Chinese and Western cultures,” says Song Ge, chairman of Beijing Culture Media, currently one of the hottest studios in Beijing. “Now we are taking a more targeted approach and thinking more strategically about how we collaborate.”

Action star Wu Jing’s smash hit Wolf Warrior 2, which Song’s Beijing Culture coproduced, could be the box-office phenomenon that launches the new model. The film blends a story of emphatically Chinese patriotic appeal — the tagline: “Whoever attacks China will be killed no matter how far the target is” — with a level of action-flick proficiency previously unseen.

The Hollywood dazzle came courtesy of Marvel mainstays Joe and Anthony Russo (the duo is at work on the next Avengers film), who consulted on the project via a deal with Beijing Culture.