China will be replacing Hollywood as the hub of global filmmaking. This was according to some Hollywood and Chinese filmmakers.
"The investors in China's film market are entrepreneurs with innovative teams, while Hollywood is producing more sequels and lacks innovation," Yu Dong, the CEO of Bona Film Group, said during a seminar on China-foreign co-productions hosted by the Beijing International Film Festival on Sunday. Bona is a leading Chinese film studio and distributor.
"The young Hollywood and Asian directors who can't get support from big Hollywood studios will come to China because Chinese capital is overflowing," said Mr. Yu, whose company recently delisted from the Nasdaq stock market and has won investments from arms of Chinese Internet giants including Alibaba Group and Tencent Holdings.
The said seminar was attended by few big-names in Western filmmakers including veteran British producer Iain Smith, whose recent productions include "Mad Max: Fury Road"(2015), and American actress Natalie Portman, who brought her directorial debut "A Tale of Love and Darkness" (2015) to this year's festival.
James Schamus, an award-winning American screenwriter and producer whose credits include Ang Lee's "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon"(2000), said at the seminar that China is helping to "create a new Hollywood which is going to be paradoxically not as Chinese as we think it is, but more Chinese than we know."
Joe Russo, the director of Marvel's "Captain America" franchise, said in another interview that a growing number of Hollywood producers are coming to China for both "economic and artistic reasons."
"The film market in the U.S. is becoming more and more about branded content, the safe play," said Mr. Russo."(There's) no room in Hollywood unless you plan a superhero film or Star Wars."
"China is an explosive market, so (it's) absolutely another option for filmmakers," he said, adding that he and his brother, Anthony Russo, are becoming frequent visitors to Beijing in search of "new voices and new experiences."
"When Batman even starts to fight with Superman, you can see it only grosses (a modest amount) from China," said Mr. Yu of Bona, referring to Warner Brother's "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice."
"At some point, they will tell us they are done with that, but now I think it is not there yet," he said, adding this new Chinese venture, on the other hand, makes him "creatively invigorated."
