The Riverside Press-Enterprise
China has lost interest in seeing Hollywood movies
Before the sequel to “Aquaman” was released in China last month, Warner Bros. did everything it could to sustain the original movie’s success.
The Hollywood studio blanketed Douyin, the Chinese version of Tiktok, with movie clips, behind-thescenes footage and a video of an Aquaman ice sculpture at a winter festival in Harbin, a city in China’s northeast. It sent the franchise’s star, Jason Momoa, and director, James Wan, on a publicity tour in China — the type of barnstorming that had disappeared since the COVID-19 pandemic. Momoa said China’s fondness for the first “Aquaman” was why the sequel was debuting in China two days before the U.S. release.
“I’m very proud that China loved it, so that’s why we brought it to you, and you guys are going to see it before the whole world,” he said in an interview with CCTV 6, China’s state-run film channel.
The big push didn’t work. “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom” has collected only about $60 million in China after a few weeks of release. That was nowhere near the 2018 original’s $90 million opening weekend in China on its way to a $293 million haul, accounting for one-quarter of that movie’s $1.2 billion box office success.
The producers of the “Aquaman” movies are not the only ones finding that China has become a lost kingdom.
In 2023, no American films ranked among the 10 highest grossing in China despite highly anticipated sequels in the “Mission: Impossible,” “Fast & the Furious” and “Spider-man” franchises.
Neither “Oppenheimer”
nor “Barbie,” two of Hollywood’s biggest hits last year, cracked the top 30 in China at the box office, according to Maoyan, a Chinese entertainment data provider that has tracked ticket sales since 2011. The only other recent year when Hollywood was shut out of China’s top 10 was 2020, during the pandemic.
Chinese moviegoers who once flocked to Hollywood films have been steadily disappearing. China is, by far, the biggest movie market outside the United States and a place that American studios rely on for growth and profitability as the film industry struggles.
“The days when a Hollywood
film would make hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars in China — that’s gone,” said Stanley Rosen, a professor at USC, who studies Chinese politics and the film industry.
China’s film industry is producing more highquality movies that resonate with domestic audiences. The country’s top two films last year highlight the diversity of offerings: “Full River Red,” a dialogue-rich suspense thriller, and “The Wandering Earth II,” a science-fiction blockbuster heavy with special effects.
Against the backdrop of growing tensions with the United States, China has
advanced its ambitions to become a cultural influence, supporting efforts by local filmmakers to create films that are in line with the ruling Communist Party’s doctrines.
In recent years, some of the highest-grossing films have played up themes of a stronger and more assertive China. The topgrossing Chinese films of all time are “The Battle at Lake Changjin,” a 2021 film that depicts an against-allodds defeat of the United States during the Korean War and “Wolf Warrior 2,” a 2017 nationalist action flick in which a Chinese Jason Bourne-like character takes on an American soldier
of fortune.
Shi Chuan, vice chair of the Shanghai Film Association, said many U.S. studios once viewed China as a market where they could always make money. That is no longer the case. Wary Chinese consumers are spending less and box office sales have not returned to pre-pandemic levels.
“Now I am telling American film companies that this mentality is no longer viable,” Shi said. “You must study deeply to understand the Chinese market, Chinese audiences and Chinese pop culture.”
Hannah Li, 27, works at a technology company in Beijing. She used to watch
only foreign films, she said, but that has changed recently. She said her favorite film last year was “The Wandering Earth II,” a story about how the world came together to save Earth from being engulfed by the sun. The film’s message, Li said, promotes a type of collectivism that she rarely sees in Hollywood movies — and should send a signal to American producers.
“If you don’t want to get off your high horse to see what we like, then it’s natural that you will be washedout,” Li said. “Hollywood movies can no longer bring novelty to Chinese audiences.”