With a few exceptions, Hollywood studios are moving far more slowly than Chinese companies in the world’s second largest movie market, said US producer Janet Yang, whose works include The Joy Luck Club and Shanghai Calling.
Many studios, like Paramount Pictures with its Transformers franchise, have been taking steps to appeal to China’s fast-growing audiences by hiring Chinese actors or featuring Chinese products in their films.
Others are doing co-productions in China and some, like Dreamworks Animation, have forged nascent partnerships.
But largely “the studios are not doing that much right now. They are feeling it out,” said Yang, 57, who has built a career melding East and West since she advised on Steven Spielberg’s 1987 movie Empire of the Sun, shot partly in Shanghai.
“I’ve never seen so much talk about things with so few results. But that’s going to change,” Yang, named one of the 50 most powerful women in Hollywood by the Hollywood Reporter, told journalists during a visit to China.
Despite an import quota, Hollywood movies have dominated China’s box office – until that changed dramatically this year.
From January to June, domestic films outperformed imported ones by 65 per cent, a major reversal from the same period last year, when proceeds from imported films almost doubled those of domestic productions.
Yang, who helped Disney adapt High School Musical for a Chinese audience, said US studios are taking mostly “defensive measures” to avoid alienating an increasingly important market but should start to think bigger.
“How about actually creating something that is appealing for the Chinese and also for the global market? I believe it’s possible,” said New York-born Yang.
Chinese studios are torn between wanting to cash in on the cinema boom at home and trying to go global
Part of the shift in the Chinese attention to domestic films comes down to big improvements in story lines and production.
“I really am impressed with the quality of films that have been coming out just the last couple of years,” Yang said.
“I understand why people are going.”
She pointed to this year’s romantic comedy One Night Surprise and last year’s unexpected blockbuster Lost in Thailand as the new breed of Chinese films that take some risks and connect with the modern audience.
Still, a made-in-China global hit with Chinese characteristics – such as Kung Fu Panda – seems unlikely for the time being without Hollywood’s help.
That 2008 Dreamworks creation sparked some soul searching in China, with many wondering why Chinese film-makers have not done something like that.
“It still stands as one of the few examples of a global studio franchise that was replete with Chinese context and it was not compromised on any level,” Yang said.
Chinese studios are torn between wanting to cash in on the cinema boom at home and trying to go global, she said. Growth in Chinese-American co-productions will help pave the way.
“The main problem is really not a lack of skills, it’s lack of exposure,” Yang said.
“If you’re trying to make a global film, you can’t just do it through a Chinese lens.”