As China shrugs at Hollywood films, the NBA tries to soothe over tensions.
A few years ago, Sony’s video-game adaptation “Uncharted” seemed like a sure-fire hit in China.
Action-adventure films always play well in China, and the filmgoers over there don’t have the snobbery towards video game adaptations that Americanss often do, as the 2018 film “Tomb Raider,” did better there than it did in the U.S.. Plus, “Uncharted” star Tom Holland is well-known to Chinese audiences thanks to his role as Spider-Man.
But while “Uncharted” proved to be a sturdy box office hit for Sony (SNE) – Get Sony Corp. Report over the weekend, taking in $51 million domestically, its success in China is hardly assured. Heck, some experts think the studio should be thankful the film is opening there at all, as the Chinese government is becoming increasingly restrictive about what films can open in China, and Chinese audiences are increasingly turning away from Western fare as geopolitical tensions between China and America continue to escalate.
But this is an unwelcome development for an industry that has come to rely on Chinese audiences to help its films become profitable.
China Says “Meh” To Hollywood
Sony
The Chinese government has absolute control over which films get released in its country, and lately it has been increasingly hostile to American films. As an example, three of last year’s box-office conquering Disney’s (DIS) – Get Walt Disney Company Report Marvel films (“Spider-Man: No Way Home,” “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” and “Eternals,”) did not open there at all. “Black Widow” was allowed to open in China, but its release day in July coincided with a blackout period for any foreign film in the country, and by that time it had been highly pirated. So essentially, it opened there, but not really.
This is a dramatic turnaround, as China once loved Marvel. “Avengers: Endgame” earned $629.1 million in 2019, “Avengers: Infinity War” $359.5 million in 2018, box office totals that helped both films push past the global billion-dollar mark.
Hollywood became reliant on the Chinese market in the 2010s, as the lucrative DVD market began drying up amid piracy and the streaming revolution, and it became increasingly difficult to get American audiences to see anything in theaters beyond franchise films, which were becoming increasingly expensive to make.
The Chinese filmgoing market essentially tripled since 2012, and for a good while there, a strong box office showing in China was considered the most reliable way to make sure a film passed the billion mark in grosses and become highly profitable, and in 2020 the country overtook North America to become the biggest box office in the world.
Last year the soft opening weekend in China of “’Fast and Furious 9” helped cement that film’s reputation as an under performer. The latest installment of the popular franchise earned $123 million in its opening weekend, which accounted for 80 percent of the total weekend box office, but was still down compared to the gross for “The Fate of the Furious,” which earned $192 million in China on its opening weekend and $392.8 million total.
Some of that soft opening can be attributed to the fact that the film opened right as the world was slowly starting to open back up as well as the film’s poor word-of-mouth in China. But it would also seem that Chinese audiences are increasingly turning away from Hollywood productions in favor of homegrown fare.
Highly touted films such as “Dune,” the James Bond film “No Time to Die,” and “The Matrix: Resurrections” all underperformed in China relative to America, while Chinese productions such as “Hi, Mom” and “Detective Chinatown 3” handily out-earned them, with the former taking in $822 million and the latter $686 million last summer.
The Chinese government is known to censor films that reach its shore, or to not let them open at all. Recently Twitter had a good laugh at a bizarre edit to the Chinese release of the film “Fight Club” in which the police avert the climatic of the film at the last moment, much to the befuddlement of director David Fincher.
China has a reputation for censoring (or simply not allowing) any film with an undercurrent of questioning authority (which is a common theme of Western films), and it also bans any mention of homosexuality. Marvel fans questioned whether “Eternals,” which features a same-sex couple, would open in China at all or be heavily edited by the government.
But it’s been speculated that the recent ban is less about the content of any particular film, and more of a political move, and signs of a rise in isolationism and nationalism in the country.
Between 2012 and 2019, “China approved 45 to 55 U.S.-produced movies each year…but as China overtook the U.S. as the biggest theatrical market in 2020 and 2021, the amount dropped notably to roughly 31 movies each year. So far in 2022, just six U.S.-made films have been accepted to play in China,” reported Variety.
Chinese President Xi Jinping openly views America as a fading super power, and he is fond of saying “the East is rising and the West is declining.” China has begun a political alliance with Russia, and as President Biden recently imposed sanctions on the country to deter Vladimir Putin from invading Ukraine. Amid these rising political tensions, the increasingly isolationist streak of the country isn’t likely to deescalate soon, much to Hollywood’s dismay.
NBA Tries To De-Escalate East-West Tensions
Hollywood isn’t the only American export to be caught in a cultural conflict much larger than itself. The NBA’s China operation is worth more than $5 billion, including a $1.5 billion media rights agreement with China-based tech company Tencent.
In October of 2019, Daryl Morey, the general manager of the Houston Rockets, shared an image on Twitter that showed support for the pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong, which have been pushing back at what they deem authoritarian rule and human rights abuses. This outraged the Chinese government, and the state-run CCTV stopped airing NBA games for a while, and Beijing condemned the remarks.
While Tencent would continue to air up to three games a night, the ban was nonetheless damaging. NBA games eventually returned to CCTV in October of last year, as the league reportedly estimated it had lost hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue from the ban.
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver says he resisted a demand from the Chinese government to fire Morey, but the the league issued a statement calling it “regrettable” that his views “deeply offended many of our friends and fans in China.”
Silver has recently been trying to ignore the pro-Hong Kong protestors that show up at games or calls from Republican senators to stop doing business with China, and doing what he can to get the NBA to de-escalate the tension.
In an interview last year with SiriusXM show “Basketball and Beyond with Coach K,” he said “I think that, you know, especially when tensions are even higher as they are right now between us and China, you know, unless somehow we’re truly going to go our own way, which seems impossible in this interconnected world, that basketball, sports, culture, are an opportunity to bring people together.”
