How can Hollywood cash in on China's chart-topping metrics?

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It's no surprise that Chinese moviegoers share a different taste in films compared to their US counterparts. If the Chinese box office is any indicator, "Ready Player One" is one of those examples. The film raked in more than 1 billion yuan (159 million US dollars) in just 10 days, almost two times the US box office.

China's box office coup in the first quarter of 2018 beat out US grosses and catapulted it to the top of the global box office for the first time.

"How to get a piece of the burgeoning Chinese market" is a paramount question of the day in Hollywood, but the more urgent question should be "How to adapt to the changing landscape of a 'world's largest market' that's not its own."

A recent report by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) revealed that even in the face of mounting trade tensions between the United States and China, whose impact on the entertainment industry is still unclear, the importance of Chinese moviegoers to Hollywood's future is significant.

Posters for films in front of a cinema /VCG Photo

Co-production, Chinese cast

Xian Li, a Hollywood studio executive, believes US-China co-production is a way for indie productions to gain access to China's huge market, but like other American exporters, Hollywood should adapt to the changing market.

"Hollywood studios are not really deep in the co-pro game. They can't adapt fast enough to a rapidly changing market," Li said in an interview with Xinhua. "So it's a tremendous opportunity for smaller production companies to take advantage of the vacuum, develop those key relationships in China and grow with the industry there."

"Chinese audiences are changing. They are more sophisticated now, and more open to a diversity of movies, not just Hollywood blockbusters, but Indian, European, Thai, Japanese, etc. That increases the pressure on American filmmakers," she said.

As one of those smaller companies jockeying for position in China's booming market, Leomark Studios, a Los Angeles-based production and distribution studio, is excited by the opportunities it sees before it.

"It's very difficult for newer companies to really break into Hollywood, but the China market is buzzing, and we feel there's a real future for us there," said Erik Lundmark, CEO of Leomark.

But Li cautioned that it's not going to be easy, "finding that magical co-pro that works in both markets can be something of a unicorn."

Donnie Yen in "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story" and Chris Wu in "Valarian and the City of One Thousand Planets" /CGTN Photo

A less difficult winning strategy many are adopting is to cast more Chinese stars in Western movies, like Donnie Yen and Jiang Wen in Disney's "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story" or Chris Wu in Europa's "Valarian and the City of One Thousand Planets."

Legendary Entertainment, now owned by China's Dalian Wanda Group, has adopted this hybrid approach for their popular Pacific Rim franchise, introducing more Chinese actors to the cast, including star Jing Tian. This prompted one ebullient, online fan to rave, "The fighting is great. Jing saved the world in the end. All hail China!"

Scripts an easier way?

"Hollywood invented the film business and China has come an impressively long way in improving their production skills in a very short time, but their scripts aren't quite there yet. China needs Hollywood writers," Li said.

Gavin Scott, writer of the Emmy-Award winning "Mists of Avalon" and veteran Hollywood screenwriter who has penned scripts for the likes of Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, is keen on stepping into the breach.

He has traveled recently to China where he negotiated with two Chinese production companies to write Chinese feature films for the Chinese and international market. No stranger to mentoring other writers, Scott finds the prospect of collaborating with the Chinese an exciting one.

"I think it's a great opportunity for writers from two great cultures to come together and collaborate to create the entertainment of the future," he told Xinhua in an interview.

When asked about the challenges of creating "writer-for-hire" commercial cross-cultural fare, he was undaunted: "Both China and Hollywood have great cultural riches to draw on and if writers can find a way to combine them, the whole world will benefit."

The Los Angeles Tourism & Convention Board holds its annual "Nihao China" trade show at Warner Bros. Studio Tour Hollywood, Oct. 26, 2017. /Xinhua Photo

Challenges ahead

Meanwhile, the LA Times reported that Jeff Towson, professor of investment at Peking University's Guanghua School of Management, said Hollywood's success in China is going to increasingly come under assault by rising Chinese competitors.

"Foreign companies (like Hollywood studios) do well at the top of the market, typically because they start out having superior quality, technology or brand recognition," he said.

"But over time, the Chinese competitors grow and steadily improve their quality. They reinvest, make acquisitions and begin to attack the top of the market," he predicted.

(With input from Xinhua)