This week, Neil Calloway argues that Hollywood’s dominance of the film industry might be at an end…
First, it was announced that Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed up to star in a $200 million Chinese film. It used to be the case that only hasbeens and never weres went outside Hollywood to make a movie, but now a star the calibre of Schwarzenegger is doing it. It’s explained, partially at least, by the fact that a quarter of the box office Terminator: Genisys came from China; it earned $113 million there, against less than $90 million in North America.
Of course, you could argue that Arnie is a hasbeen – looking at the box office for his last few films would certainly suggest his star has waned since he returned to acting after his stint as Governor of California, but he’s still a huge name; one of the few stars almost everyone recognises; for him to be turning to China to make a film shows that the whole film world will be doing the same.
Related to this is Ang Lee’s pronouncement that he believes China will soon overtake the US in box office takings. Lee was born in Taiwan, so knows the region well (the disputes between China and Taiwan are too complicated to go into here, but it’s probably a safe bet to say that Ang Lee knows more about China than Paul Feig). He might be right, and he’s only voicing what many in Hollywood already know; North American domestic box office is less of an indicator of a film’s success than it once was and studios are increasingly looking to foreign markets for success.
As a film-making location, Hollywood is in decline; tax breaks and studio space elsewhere mean Southern California is being used less and less to shoot films; Eastern Europe, Britain and Australia are all more likely to be used for big budget movies that need large studios to accommodate them. Other places are opening up to film-makers more and more – Georgia (the US state, not the former Soviet Socialist Republic) seems to be the go to place right now for shooting in the US (they offer up to 30% off the money you spend in the state in tax breaks if you make your film there).
Hollywood might continue to be the place where the deals are done, but increasingly the finance is coming from elsewhere and the filming is done out of town. It’s not hard to wonder if Hollywood’s day as the centre of the film industry has been and gone; we live in a globalised world now, and if it’s cheaper and easier to make a film somewhere other than LA, then it will be made there.
There are several reasons why China isn’t about to kill off Hollywood’s dominance of movie making; also this week Paramount Pictures were fined in the country for breaching a contract over product placement in Transformers: Age of Extinction; instead of paying the $300,000 fine, Bumblebee has been impounded. It’s still a communist country, and film-makers will have to tread carefully in ways they wouldn’t have to in more open, democratic countries. English is also the language of business worldwide, which, for the time being at least, gives the Americans an advantage over other countries.
There has been much talk of a pivot of US foreign policy away from Europe towards Asia in recent years, and Hollywood’s courting of co-productions with China is an element of that, or at least acknowledges the tilt in world power structures towards the East (though I suppose if you’re based in Hollywood, you’d probably fly West to get to China).
Hollywood isn’t dead yet, but it might be slowly dying.
Neil Calloway is a pub quiz extraordinaire and Top Gun obsessive. Check back here every Sunday for future instalments.
Originally published October 30, 2016. Updated April 16, 2018.
