Has Hollywood lost China? – New York times

“Barbenheimer” – the name given to the release of “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” on the same day last summer – was a true cultural phenomenon in most parts of the world. Movie theaters were filled with clothes in various shades of pink. Social media is full of opinions. Collectively, the films grossed $2.3 billion worldwide.

But the Barbenheimer story played out differently in China. Neither film reached the top 30 releases in the country last year. In fact, as my colleagues Claire Fu, Brooks Barnes, and Daisuke Wakabayashi have reported, it’s been a bad year for all of Hollywood at the Chinese box office, with no American film able to crack the top ten grossing films.

The numbers must be polite for Hollywood studios; China has often served as a panacea for declining domestic revenues. In 2012, seven of the top 10 releases in China were American, and Chinese companies were quickly investing billions of dollars in American entertainment. Studios have gone out of their way to appease the Chinese market, tweaking censorship scripts and shoehorning in Chinese product placements.

But in the past few years, as tensions have increased between the governments of the two countries, China has begun to look inward. Claire Vaux told me they invested in local filmmakers and filmmaking techniques like CGI. It has begun construction of thousands of new cinema screens, partly to expand the scope of films that “demonstrate the Chinese patriotic spirit,” officials said. This investment appears to be paying off, as the highest-grossing films last year were Chinese productions such as The Wandering Earth II, a sci-fi film rich in special effects and themes of collectivism.

Chinese audiences are shunning Hollywood for local film options that are improving in quality and reflect their social issues and values. “Chinese films have content that Chinese audiences can relate to culturally and emotionally,” LeClair told me. Examples include “No More Bets”, based on a real-life scam in which people were kidnapped and forced to work fraudulent online jobs in Southeast Asia, and “The Battle at Changjin Lake”, the country’s highest-grossing film of all time. About China’s victory over the United States during the Korean War.

Hannah Lee, a 27-year-old Marvel fan who grew up watching Western films, told Clare that Hollywood needs to change its approach if it wants to succeed in China. “If you don’t want to get off your high horse and see what we like, you’re naturally going to get washed up,” Hannah said.

Will Hollywood studios double their activity in China and adapt to the new normal, or reduce their losses? The change in Chinese audiences has changed the calculus in Hollywood more broadly. Studios have decided to spend less money on the kind of franchise films that have historically relied on the Chinese market to recoup their big budgets.

“If they want to cater to the Chinese market and make audiences feel they can relate more, Hollywood will need to balance losses and gains,” Clare said.

Read the full story of Claire, Brooks Barnes, and Daisuke here.

For more: After a decade of collaboration with major filmmakers, Chinese authorities have figured out how to produce watchable propaganda films, The Economist reports.

Other great stories

• Since a freight train carrying hazardous materials derailed a year ago in East Palestine, Ohio, no legislation has been passed to prevent similar disasters and accidents have increased.

• A Washington state man has pleaded guilty to making 20 phone calls to police in several states and Canada.

• Aryna Sabalenka beats Cheng Qinwen to win her second consecutive Australian Open title.

Of opinion

China should do more to protect trade routes in the Red Sea rather than criticize the US response to the emerging crisis there. Isaac Cardone And Jennifer Kavanagh He writes.

Here are the columns Nicholas Kristof At war with China and Maureen Dodd On Trump.

Sunday Question: Does Gov. Greg Abbott’s border fence in Texas constitute self-defense?

Texas claims the right to defend itself against “invasion” regardless of federal policy. “When the federal government doesn’t enforce the law, and it’s abundantly clear that it doesn’t, it leaves Texas with tough choices to make,” Nicole Russell of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram wrote. But “if he is right, each state could use the outcome of the ‘invasion’ as a pretext to wage war against anyone it wanted — including, potentially, the federal government,” Stephen Vladeck wrote in the Houston Chronicle.

I’m a rock star: Maxim Restaurant in Paris begins a new chapter after 130 years in the restaurant business. Can the forgotten hotspot regain its calm?

outside: What do you call a galaxy without stars? Dark galaxies have joined dark energy and dark matter in the cosmic lexicon.

A word via The Times: Although the word “pose” is associated with dance style, it is not so much part of the vocabulary as it is part of the movement.

Promises: In 1998, they fell quickly in love. Once gay marriage became legal, they were too busy raising daughters and building lives to make it official.

A life he lived: David Skal has been an accomplished historian of horror entertainment, examining the cultural significance of films meant to frighten us. He died at the age of 71.

I spoke with actor John Malkovich, who stars in the upcoming Apple TV+ series “The New Look.”

You first became known for your work with Steppenwolf Theater Company: emotionally confronting, crowd-pulling. I’m curious how contemporary audiences differ from audiences at that time. Hey, every generation has the right to do what they want. There are things my kids like that I don’t fully understand, but that’s the natural flow of life. Things seem crazy sometimes, unrecognizable, but I’m 70 years old. It’s perfectly normal to seem unrecognizable because part of aging is, as Linda Loman said in Death of a Salesman, “life is abandonment.”

You’ve done a lot of different things, and yet there’s always some Malkovich that comes through. You’re not one of those actors that people talk about as falling into character. There is a type of technical actor who often does cool, purely technical things. I’m not really, and I’m not sure how that charms me. I can appreciate that, especially when someone is very good at it, but I don’t think there are 50 personalities like that in an actor. There’s, like, five.

I want to return to the line from “Death of a Salesman”: “Life is renunciation.” What do you exclude? You have to let go of the past, and let go of connections. At this age, there are people who have died now who were very close to me. There are people I love to have a conversation with – I dream about them sometimes and have the conversation with them in dreams – and I will never see them again. This is a normal part of life. It is disposed of in the sense that it is allowed to float away. It also doesn’t weigh you down. he is gone.

Read more of the interview here.

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Our editors’ picks: Not Here to Make Friends, a raunchy romance filled with lies, deceit, and turbulent sex, and eight other books.

Best selling times: “Just One More Sleep” by Jamie Lee Curtis, which tells the story of a young girl waiting for her next birthday, is new to the children’s picture book bestseller list.

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next week

What should you pay attention to?

• A Hong Kong court will tomorrow hear a petition to liquidate property developer China Evergrande, which defaulted on its foreign debt in 2021.

• A decision in Donald Trump’s civil fraud trial is expected to be reached on Wednesday.

What are you cooking this week?