What's changed? A few things.
The pandemic did affect Chinese spending habits, much like everyone else. The Chinese government started funding more movies in line with their cultural drivers and also toeing the CCP values and more Chinese resonant marketing. And Hollywood was caught in the middle of altering films to be more CCP friendly, catching the ire of both parties in Congress.
Before the sequel to "Aquaman" was released in China last month, Warner Bros. did everything it could to sustain the original movie's success.
The Hollywood studio blanketed Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, with movie clips, behind-the-scenes footage and a video of an Aquaman ice sculpture at a winter festival in Harbin, a city in China's northeast. It sent the franchise's star, Jason Momoa, and director, James Wan, on a publicity tour in China — the type of barnstorming that had disappeared since the Covid pandemic. Mr. Momoa said China's fondness for the first "Aquaman" was why the sequel was debuting in China two days before the U.S. release.
"I'm very proud that China loved it, so that's why we brought it to you, and you guys are going to see it before the whole world," he said in an interview with CCTV 6, China's state-run film channel."The days when a Hollywood film would make hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars in China — that's gone," said Stanley Rosen, a professor at the University of Southern California who studies Chinese politics and the film industry.
China's film industry is producing more high-quality movies that resonate with domestic audiences. The country's top two films last year highlight the diversity of offerings: "Full River Red," a dialogue-rich suspense thriller, and "The Wandering Earth II," a science-fiction blockbuster heavy with special effects.