The Great Wall: Transforming Manner of Sino-Hollywood Film Co-Production

Hollywood has long been putting its close attention on the fast-growing Chinese cinema industry. With years of stagnation on the domestic market, Hollywood film corporations are actively exploring a marketable and lucrative way to cooperate with Chinese counterparts. To gain the more advanced film technology and broaden its overseas channels for distribution, the Chinese government has been releasing multiple relevant policies to embrace this trend and promote its development along the way.

This article examines the transforming mode of Sino-Hollywood film co-production since 2002 when the Chinese film industrialization reform initiated. From pure capital investment in Chinese films to an awkward application of "Chinese elements" into Hollywood blockbusters, American film companies realized the fact that few works achieved both commercial and critical success or became a smash hit on both film markets of the two nations. The Great Wall (Zhang Yimou, 2016) is the most recent exploration of a new manner of such co-production. It not only features Chinese and Hollywood actors as protagonists, a story fully happened in China , film dialogues mainly in English, and a Chinese belief about "trust" embedded in the film but also a first trail to narrate a Chinese story under the Hollywood framework and aimed at a being understood and accepted both by Eastern and Western audiences. The film was released in China on 16 December 2016 and grossed more than 130 million USD in fortnight till 30 December 2016. Its global screening schedule includes Russia (19 January 2017), Netherlands (16 February 2017), U.S.A. (17 February 2017), Argentina & Germany (23 February 2017), U.K. & Sweden (24 February 2017) etc. The whole industry is now keeping an eye on its coming overseas performance to investigate the feasibility of such co-production method.

This article contends that The Great Wall (Zhang Yimou, 2016) is another turning point in the Chinese film history. It is a decisive work that will greatly influence how future co-production manners going and in what way can Chinese culture travels further and impact deeper. The Chinese government, which is targeting at a more effective exportation of Chinese culture and value, has officially issued the Film Industry Promotion Law on 7 November 2016 to encourage international cooperations in investing, film-making, distributing and film festival attending. To employ the Hollywood film production standards when making co-production works and get a say in the international film market by a series of mergers and acquisitions to overseas companies are the big trends that Chinese film industry is now heading to.