【美国电台节目】好莱坞在“迎合”中国观众吗？

TRANSCRIPT

Whenyou watch a big-budget film, you may not be thinking about how China influencedthe story, the characters and the product placements. But after this interview,you'll probably be on the lookout for those things. How did you startnoticing the Chinese influence on American films when you started to be TheWall Street Journal's reporter on the Hollywood industry?

Itstarted in small ways. I joined the Journal in 2013, and I would have thismorning routine of checking the trade publications, and there would be thesenotices - you know, Chinese actress Fan Bingbing cast in a new"X-Men" movie or this Chinese industrialist was financing a slate offilms at Paramount.

So Chineseinfluence is especially noticeable in action films, franchise films, blockbustersof all sorts. That's where the big money is. So I want you to give us a tourof, you know, a recent or fairly recent movie in which you see a lot of Chineseinfluence. Because I know you've been seeing a lot of movies looking for thatinfluence.

So the one exampleI always go back to was released several years ago - was the fourth installmentof the "Transformers" franchise. And this movie became something of acase study in how Hollywood was trying to appeal to the Chinese audiences becausethe "Transformers" movies at this point had been doing better andbetter with each successive installment in the Chinese market, really grossinghundreds of millions of dollars in ticket sales.

And so when thetime came for production to start on the fourth installment, which was called"Age Of Extinction," they really threw everything against the wall.They held a reality show competition in which they cast four Chinese actors andactresses in cameo roles in the movie. They even filmed, I think, about a thirdof it in China, and then they also struck all these product placement dealsthat would suffuse the film with Chinese products, some of which make verylittle sense. So there is a scene in which the characters are in Chicago, andas they recover from the robot war, they have to raid a Chicago conveniencestore where they just happened to buy Chinese protein powder. There is anotherscene where an ATM has to be used in the middle of Texas. It happens to be aChinese ATM.

So really not alot of logic behind these choices, but it became this example of how thisHollywood movie that is still really a distinctly Hollywood film - it starsMark Wahlberg and Stanley Tucci - nonetheless was going to throw in what theproducers called Chinese elements in an effort to appeal to Chinese audiences.And that "Transformers" example, I think, is probably the mostobvious one. But it also really became the benchmark, and then a lot of otherproducers followed suit, some of whom would maybe try and strategically cast anactor and actress in a bit role or find a reason to take the plot to China -maybe not do as many things as the "Transformers" production did buttry it out a little bit, if they could, and see if it would help them selltickets there.

So did that"Transformers" film do well in China?

It was a massivesuccess, and it ended up making more money than every previousinstallment. 

Have recentAmerican movies been shown in China? Have they gotten through?

There have beensome American movies let into China over the past year. But the ones that thestudios really care about getting in, the big, expensive movies like"Black Widow" or the "Eternals," or even "Shang-ChiAnd The Legend Of The Ten Rings," starring Marvel's first Asian lead superhero,have not gotten into China.

What impact isthat having on the American movie industry?

Well, it is - ithas an immediate impact of depriving the studios of what was probably going tobe hundreds of millions of dollars in box office grosses from the country. Butit's also forced an examining of the business plan that China has supported andencouraged over the past decade. So when a movie is being put into productionand before anyone says, OK, let's go write a check for $200 million to makethis movie, the executives have what they call a green light meeting where theysay, if we release this movie, we're expecting to make this much money in theU.S. and Canada, this much money in the rest of the world. And then there's athird column for China. We expect to make this much money in China.

And oftentimes,that China number allows the studio to greenlight a movie at a higher budgetthan they otherwise would. And for the past decade or so, it's one of thereasons why the movies being released by these studios are bigger and more expensivethan ever before. It's because China's allowed them to spend that money andjustify it. Now in those green light meetings, with China being so uncertain,it's much harder to take that risk.