Luca and Free Guy signal Hollywood’s return to China, but does an audience now spoiled rotten by high-quality Chinese tentpoles still give a damn about American blockbusters?
Pixar’s Luca, which has earned $23 million worldwide in non-Disney+ territories, opened in China yesterday (Friday over there due to time zone magic) with around $1.2 million, placing second to Raging Fire which earned $2.9 million on its fourth Friday. The last film helmed by the late Benny Chan opened the weekend of July 30 with $37 million. It has since legged out to $136.5 million and may top Ip Man 4 to become Donnie Yen’s biggest movie ever in China. Meanwhile, Luca is noteworthy as the first Hollywood export since Peter Rabbit: The Runaway in mid-June.
To be fair, China has long had a mid-summer blackout period whereby only Chinese flicks get to play theatrically. But the blackout was more punishing than usual due to the struggling global box office. With Luca opening this weekend and Free Guy opening next week, Hollywood biggies are back in China. But are they, uh, bigger than ever? Hollywood certainly hopes so, especially as the rest of the world (and, yes, including China) is still dealing with additional Covid-related challenges.
Luca’s opening day isn’t much, but the word of mouth (9.1 on Maoyan and 8.9 on Taopiaopiao) is promising and Pixar movies have been known to leg out in China even after a slow start. Soul opened with $5.5 million in late 2020 then jumped to $13.8 million in weekend two and legged out to $57 million. Likewise, Coco opened with $17 million in late November 2018 and then earned $44 million in weekend two before earning a record-for-Pixar $189 million.
Granted, $57 million is more likely as a best-case-scenario than $189 million (especially with HD Disney+ rips existing online since mid-June), but we’ll see how that plays out. Opening next week will be Ryan Reynolds’ Free Guy, which has earned $60 million worldwide thus far in a non-Covid time would have seemed like a candidate for breakout status. Shawn Levy’s well-reviewed and well-received over/under $115 million original is both deeply immersed in video game culture and heavily influenced by American pop culture.
Both variables helped Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One earn $220 million in 2018, which in turn made the $175 million Ernest Cline adaptation into a $581 million-grossing hit. Save for Godzilla Vs. Kong ($188 million) and F9 ($216 million), Hollywood has mostly been on an unrequested sabbatical from China since late 2019. When Dolittle is a “hit” because it almost hit $20 million, well, that’s a different scenario for a territory once thought of as Hollywood’s blockbuster lifeline.
That wasn’t true before Covid and it’s certainly not true now that a year mostly without Hollywood biggies has only strengthened the industry’s reliance on homegrown tentpoles. Even before the pandemic upended the theatrical industry, the notion of China as Hollywood’s savior was, at best, an illusion. Yes, money is money, but China is better at artificially inflating (because studios often get just 25% of the ticket price versus around 50% elsewhere) the global grosses of already successful films.
Chinese audiences flocked to Dark of the Moon ($166 million in 2011) and Age of Extinction ($300 million in 2014) because they liked Michael Bay’s Transformers movies. They flocked to MCU movies because they liked the MCU. Avengers: Infinity War earned $356 million in China, which was still “only” 17% of its $2.048 billion global total. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom earned 20% of its $1.308 billion cume ($267 million) in China, while even Furious 7 earned 26% of its $1.515 billion cume from China.
Meanwhile, most tentpoles that disappointed or outright bombed worldwide didn’t earn enough in China to qualify as a hit. Godzilla: King of the Monsters earned $135 million in 2019, but the film’s $385 million cume was still a whiff. Warcraft earned $220 million in China (from a frontloaded $90 million Wed/Thurs debut), but the $165 million flick was still considered a miss at $438 million in 2016. The Mummy earning $81 million in China wasn’t enough to save it or Universal’s Dark Universe.
Even worse, momentary success for otherwise disappointing tentpoles like Terminator Genisys ($113 million from a $26 million opening day) or X-Men: Apocalypse ($123 million) led to false hope that those franchises weren’t dead men walking. RIP - Terminator: Dark Fate and X-Men: Dark Phoenix and Pacific Rim: Uprising. However, there was a brief moment in 2017/2018 when big-ish movies were getting a boost from China, and not just grindhouse actioners like London Has Fallen and The Mechanic: Resurrection.
Think Resident Evil: The Final Chapter ($159 million in China for a $312 million cume on a $40 million budget), xXx: The Return of Xander Cage ($164 million/$385 million/$80 million), Kong: Skull Island ($168 million/$568 million/$185 million) and Bumblebee ($171 million/$468 million/$130 million) and War for the Planet of the Apes ($113 million/$490 million/$150 million). Still, a $228 million in China couldn’t make Transformers: The Last Knight ($605 million on a $210 million budget) a hit.
By late 2018, Marvel (Venom, Captain Marvel) and DC (Aquaman) superhero flicks were becoming as dominant in China as in North America. Save for The Fast Saga (Hobbs & Shaw grossed $201 million in 2019), Chinese box office was ruled by Marvel, DC and China itself. As very longtime readers know, I’ve been warning about the whole “China doesn’t need Hollywood biggies anyway” thing since I saw Gone with the Bullets in late 2014. The film, partially shot with 3-D IMAX cameras, earned $83 million in China.
It hinted at an era where local biggies approximated the Hollywood variation at least to the extent of negating the need for exports. From 2015 to 2020, we saw a steady run of bigger and bigger Chinese blockbusters, from and almost exclusively for China, pulling in box office totals that would make any Hollywood executive envious. Monster Hunt earned $385 million in 2015, going toe to toe with Furious 7 ($392 million) as the biggest Chinese grosser ever. Stephen Chow’s The Mermaid (a bonkers-bananas environmental fantasy/horror/romance) earned $554 million in early 2016.
Yimou Zhang’s The Great Wall, envisioned by Legendary as a big-budget Hollywood and Chinese coproduction which would score in both territories, pleased neither demographic. Sure, the Matt Damon/Pedro Pascal/Tian Jing/Andy Lau action fantasy earned $154 million in China in late 2016, but that wasn’t enough when the $150 million flick stiffed everywhere else (including $45 million in North America) for a mere $334 million global finish. When China has its own goodies, they don’t need American movie stars for manufactured respectability.
Wolf Warrior II, a “What if Rambo: First Blood part II but Chinese?” nationalistic action spectacular starring and directed by Wu Jing, earned $854 million in China alone. That’s still more in any single territory than any movie save for The Force Awakens ($937 million domestic) and Avengers: Endgame ($865 million domestic). By the way, the next biggest single-territory grosser is China’s early 2021 release Hi, Mom, which grossed $825 million right alongside Detective Chinatown 3.
That action-comedy trilogy has earned $125 million in 2015, $575 million in 2018 and $685 million in 2021, earning more in China alone than the unadjusted domestic total of The Dark Knight trilogy. Between Wolf Warrior II and Hi, Mom, Chinese moviegoers flocked to Monster Hunt 2 ($361 million in early 2018), The Wandering Earth ($699 million in early 2019), the animated Ne Zha ($722 million in summer 2019) and two of the three biggest global releases of 2020, My People My Homeland ($430 million) and The Eight Hundred ($470 million).
The biggest global grosser of 2020 was Japan’s anime adaptation Demon Slayer The Movie ($400 million in Japan and over $500 million worldwide). But I digress. We never found out whether the 2018/2019 spree of over-performing DC/Marvel comic book movies was part of a permanent trend or a momentary fluke, and/or if the newly dominant solo superhero flick (as recently as 2018, the biggest non-ensemble comic book superhero movie was Ant-Man and the Wasp with $125 million) would continue to crowd out everything else.
Now we have a different question. Black Widow is likely to get pummeled by piracy if it even ever plays in China. Both Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings and Eternals embroiled in controversy in relation to Chinese audiences (or the Chinese government). Comic book dominance may take a back seat, give or take “they loved the last one” entries like Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, Venom: Let There Be Carnage and Spider-Man: No Way Home.
If such a thing transpires, and that’s a big “if” (Shang-Chi certainly feels closer in spirit to Aquaman than Mulan in terms of actually appealing to Chinese moviegoers), then will a downturn for superhero movies lead to an upswing for other Hollywood flicks? Will Eternals and Shang-Chi being less all-encompassing lead to better Chinese box office for Matrix 4, No Time to Die and/or Top Gun: Maverick? Or is Free Guy as doomed as Mulan and Bad Boys For Life and Sonic the Hedgehog, with the freed-up revenue continuing to boost the currently successful Chinese tentpoles?
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August 21, 2021 at 02:00AM
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