Justin Lin’s Latest More Slow and Somber Than Fast and Furious in China Debut
The star-studded Hollywood Adventures opened far below estimates with a $9 million opening day and $26-$27 million weekend, only 9th best 2015 debut among Chinese films.
By Albert Wang for China Film Biz
February 24, 2012
Another week, another Chinese box office dominated by Hollywood fare.
As expected, Mission: Impossible 4 – Ghost Protocol continues its strong showing at the Chinese box office, earning $21.4 million at the Chinese box office over the week ending February 12th. This brings Ghost Protocol’s total gross to a cool $76.7 million over 16 days.
Journey 2: The Mysterious Island also had a solid debut, earning $15.2 million over just three days to claim the number two spot. The success of Journey 2 comes at an interesting time, with the Chinese government’s recent announcement regarding the expansion of its film quota. The new rules, which have yet to take effect will allow an additional 14 “enhanced” films (i.e. IMAX or 3D films) into the Chinese theatrical circuit. This is on top of the previous 20 films allowed under China’s imported film quota system.
Furthermore, Hollywood and other non-Chinese filmmakers should be able to collect a greater share of Chinese box office revenues, which has been a problem for many foreign film studios in the past. The agreement, which was announced by Vice President Joe Biden after a meeting with Chinese Vice President Xi Jingping, allows for US companies to receive 25 percent of the Chinese box office revenues generated by their films, a major increase over the previous range of 13 to 17.5 percent.
In marked contrast to Journey 2, the new domestically made Chinese films did not debut nearly as well in China. I Do and Romancing in Thin Air, two Chinese romance films looking to get a head start at the box office before Valentine’s Day, came in at the number three and four spots in the box office, respectively. Their numbers however pale in comparison to Journey 2’s, with I Do earning a modest $3.2 million in three days (or one-fifth of Journey 2’s three-day rake), and Romancing in Thin Air earning a rather weak $1.84 million over four days of release.
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Last week, in light of the announcement of an $800 million film fund headed by Bruno Wu, the question was posed on this blog regarding just who could headline a Chinese global blockbuster film. Given the dominance of Tom Cruise’s M:I 4 in recent weeks, it is pretty evident that the Hollywood’s star system is able to produce global stars in a way that China has yet to show it is capable of doing. It remains to be seen whether China’s star system ever produce a Tom Cruise, or a Dwayne Johnson.
Coincidentally, it was also around last week that a young, Taiwanese-American athlete named Jeremy Lin began to take the global media world by storm. The New York Knick’s fourth-string point guard was given the unusual opportunity to start for his team. About two weeks and seven straight wins later, Jeremy Lin is arguably now the biggest topic of conversation in both the US and Chinese media, if not most of the media world in general.
Now it may seem unusual for Lin to be mentioned in a blog on the Chinese film business. However, Lin’s recent success and unexpected global media coverage underscore the possibility that it may be Chinese-American talents who have the best potential to help Chinese cinema appeal to international audiences.
In just a span of a couple of weeks, Jeremy Lin now has over one million followers on Weibo (the mainland Chinese equivalent of Twitter). Meanwhile, back in the States, Lin’s Knicks jersey has become the number one selling jersey on NBA.com. The incredible trans-Pacific appeal of Jeremy Lin (or “Linsanity” as it has been dubbed in the US press) has few precedents in entertainment history. While such Chinese entertainment figures like Jackie Chan, Jet Li, and Yao Ming have had some cross-over appeal, there has been no ethnically Chinese celebrity with as genuine of a universal appeal in both the US and China since the legendary Bruce Lee.
Is it valid to suggest that the next Chinese Tom Cruise will in fact be Chinese-American? I suggest that this is likely, given the prevalence of successful Asian American entertainers throughout East Asia.
For instance, in South Korea, fully half of the popular boy band 2PM’s six members are Asian American. Popular Chinese stars like Wang Leehom, David Tao, Wilbur Pan, and Donnie Yen have all spent much if not all of their youths in the States. Even Yang Lan, “China’s Oprah,” logged significant time in the United States earnng her Master’s degree at Columbia University.
Now I may be biased, but I genuinely believe that there is something about the Asian American experience that improves the odds of cross-over appeal between the US and China. The recent coverage of Jeremy Lin seems to validate this notion. In order to achiev global success, Chinese films need stars who appeal to both ethnically Chinese and international moviegoers alike. My bet is that the first film to succeed in the Chinese, U.S., and global movie markets will feature an acting talent who is ethnically Chinese but culturally.
Albert Wang is an aspiring producer of US-China film co-productions who joined the Pacific Bridge Pictures team in December, 2011. His previous blog on US-China films can be seen at hollymu.com.
By Robert Cain for China Film Biz
February 7, 2012
Yesterday’s flurry of press articles regarding the newly announced Harvest Seven Stars Media Private Equity Fund (HSSMPEF) got me thinking about how easy it is these days to get tongues wagging regarding the promise of Chinese money for Hollywood movies, and how difficult the reality of putting that money to work can be.
The purported $800 million fund is a co-venture between private equity firms Harvest Alternative Investment Group and Sun Redrock Investment Group. The latter company is managed by Bruno Wu and Yang Lan, the Chinese media power couple who I profiled here last week.
The fund’s ambitions, as described by Wu, are lofty: to source and distribute “global movies, primarily English-language films that are not just going to be released in China, but really produced by Hollywood and released on a global basis.”
As a big booster of China-Hollywood cooperation, I’m pleased to see such an ambitious venture mounted. But on the other hand, I’ve seen too many of these sort of initiatives fail to get very excited about what is, after all, just a concept at this point. Other, far larger Chinese investors have attempted to accomplish the same feat that Wu and his partners say they’re pursuing, and all have so far failed to even get to the starting gate. I was close to two of these previous initiatives (confidentiality obligations prohibit me from naming them) and I’m wondering how the new fund will avoid the obstacles and pitfalls that doomed those prior undertakings.
Let’s start with this question: Is the $800 million really there? Is it really $400 million? $100 million? Is there really any committed capital at all? There’s no way to know for sure; China’s securities laws don’t allow for the sort of transparency that other countries require. The new fund’s principals have long track records and their continued success presumably rests on their reputations, so I’m willing to accept that the money’s there. But then again, if it isn’t, it wouldn’t be the first time in recent months that a ‘major’ Chinese-funded film investment partnership turned out to be nothing but vapor.
Another fundamental issue: where’s the film development, production or distribution experience in the HSSMPEF partnership? As far as I can tell, the principals of the two funds have made and released exactly one movie between them. A made-for-internet movie.
But money and experience aren’t even the biggest problems. There’s plenty of money in China, plenty of money interested in funding movies. And relevant experience can be bought (warning: don’t click that link if you’re easily offended by shameless acts of self-promotion). The real challenge, the one that has yet to be surmounted by Chinese investors or their co-production partners, is the creative challenge.
The creative challenge boils down to two fundamental sticking points that caused other, similar film investment schemes to fail. First, China’s censorship strictures. For anyone doing business in China who wishes to continue doing business in China, it is critically important not to anger the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). That means ensuring, with no risk for error, that none of the movies you fund will in any way violate the rules and taboos promulgated by SARFT, or make China or the CCP look bad.
This is a very big deal. Even a cursory review of the SARFT rules reveals that they are antithetical to popular, commercial filmmaking. Without sex, violence, horror, or crime, there’s not much room for entertainment in movies made for adult audiences. Any Chinese fund investing in films–whether made in China, in Hollywood, or anywhere else–will be held strictly accountable to these rules. But Hollywood filmmakers will find it almost impossible to be governed by them. Balancing these opposing tensions has proven an unattainable goal for previous Chinese investment fund hopefuls.
The second creative obstacle is the severe shortage of available co-production screenplays. Very few in Hollywood know how to write a script that can satisfy China’s censors while also serving as the basis for a film with appeal to Chinese audiences as well as global ones. Almost no one in China can do this either. My company, Pacific Bridge Pictures, has a team of writer-producers focused on this very challenge, and there are a few others who have the necessary cross-cultural backgrounds and development skills needed to thread that needle. But an $800 million fund is going to have a very difficult time finding or generating enough material to fill its production pipeline.
In short, for HSSMPEF to succeed, it will have to pull off a major balancing act. Wu, Yang, and their partners are all smart, capable, successful people, but they’re rushing headlong into uncharted territory on a tightrope.
Robert Cain is a producer and entertainment industry consultant who has been doing business in China since 1987. He can be reached at rob@pacificbridgepics.com and at www.pacificbridgepics.com.
By Robert Cain for China Film Biz
January 29, 2012
When friends in China began telling me last month that a Chinese investor was making a serious play to buy Summit Entertainment, I must admit I was skeptical. His name, Bruno Wu, was unfamiliar to me, and I had long ago grown inured to the come-ons of visitors from China professing to be bona fide investors.
Not that China by any means has the monopoly on posers and wannabes, but I’ve observed a strong correlation between the economic rise of the PRC and the number of Chinese trolling around Hollywood claiming to have money, connections, and the keys to the Middle Kingdom. Many, as anyone involved in Hollywood’s film industry can attest, deliver nothing more than 热风 (hot air).
But when Wu’s name came up in conversation a second, a third, and a fourth time, I realized there might be more to his story, and I decided to investigate. My first call, as usual, went to my good friend and attorney John Zhang, a partner at the Reed Smith law firm and one of the world’s top attorneys focused on U.S.-China business.
“Yes, he is for real,” John told me. “His non-Italianized name is Wu Zheng (吴征); he’s better known as husband of the famed anchorwoman Yang Lan.”
Indeed, Yang Lan’s name invariably comes up when Wu is mentioned. The Chinese power couple has made substantial and extremely lucrative careers together in Chinese media. Their China Sun Media is a significant player in Chinese television production, print and online publishing, and in 2009 Forbes listed them as the 207th wealthiest people in China, with an estimated fortune of $510 million.
Both Yang, 43, and Wu, 45, were educated in China and in the U.S., she at Beijing Foreign Studies University and at Columbia University in New York, where she earned an MA in International and Public Affairs; he at Culver-Stockton College, Missouri, and later at Washington University in Missouri where he earned his MA in international affairs. They were married in 1995 at New York’s Plaza Hotel.
The couple’s ascent as media titans began long before they met, when Yang Lan was selected in 1989 from over 1,000 applicants, at the age of 21, to host the Zheng Da celebrity quiz and talk show on China Central Television (CCTV). The timing for Yang could hardly have been better: in the post-Tiananmen era a new class of people—young, educated, upwardly mobile—was beginning to take root, and they turned to Yang as a sort of Chinese Oprah Winfrey. Within a year she was drawing TV audiences of 220 million.
Wu, for his part, began his career after he and Yang married and returned to China in 1996. He joined Hong Kong broadcaster ATV and served as its COO until 1999, when he and Yang co-founded Sun Media, for which he serves as Chairman. They took the company public on the Hong Kong stock exchange barely a year later, and on the strength of the TV, print and internet businesses they established together, before long the company was trading at a value of nearly $200 million.
Wu also served briefly as Chairman of Sina Corporation, which has since gone on to become China’s Twitter, and as a director of Shanda Interactive Entertainment, a leading online game operator. But at the time of his reported discussions with Summit Entertainment, Wu had little experience as a film executive, and it may have been this inexperience that ultimately doomed his bid for the owner of the Twilight franchise.
According to Sun Media’s corporate website, the company’s foray into film production and distribution only began in 2010, when it entered into a strategic partnership with China Film Group “with an aim to produce a variety of high quality content for women audiences.” In October of 2010 Sun released its first and only film to date, a 90-minute feature titled “Love, Finally,” which was distributed online.
My sources tell me that Wu’s bid for Summit would have been more lucrative for Summit’s shareholders than the $412.5 million in cash and stock that Lionsgate put on the table, but skepticism over Wu’s motives and his inexperience in film led them to accept the lesser Lionsgate deal. Wu has said that he is still on the hunt for media acquisitions, and with partners like the $37 billion finance firm Harvest Global Management and former TPG China head Shan Weijian, he should be well positioned to finance a substantial deal.
A recent Financial Times article speculated that Wu might be exploring a purchase of the large stake in Relativity that Elliot Associates is so eager to jettison, but logic dictates that with their collective experience and brainpower, the Wu consortium will be smart enough to avoid obvious investment blunders.
My own personal experience tells me that Wu is but one of many Chinese individuals and institutions with the wherewithal and desire to invest in Hollywood. Although no Chinese investor has yet made an acquisition of a major Hollywood brand, the Year of the Dragon will likely be the time for that to finally happen.
Robert Cain is a producer and entertainment industry consultant who has been doing business in China since 1987. He can be reached at rob@pacificbridgepics.com and www.pacificbridgepics.com.
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