Strong Chinese elements in a romantic scene in The Amazing Spider-Man 2. Provided to China Daily

Chinese, Hollywood filmmakers search for more ways to enhance cooperation

It is hard to visualize an alliance between a robot and a food chain making duck's necks. But a well-known Hollywood film has managed to bring them together.

Zhouheiya, a Chinese fast food chain whose signature product is spicy duck's neck, is teaming up with Transformers 4, the highly anticipated summer blockbuster in Hollywood, for a comprehensive promotion campaign.

"Snacks and films are a perfect fit, much like beer and football," says Annie Li, president of Reach Glory Communications, a leading entertainment marketing company in China.

"Zhouheiya will benefit immensely from the association with a movie franchise that has grossed over $2.7 billion across the world."

Reach Glory, which handles the collaboration of Zhouheiya and Transformers 4, also undertook the successful product placement campaign of Chinese television maker TCL in the popular movie Iron Man 3.

According to Li, the alliance between Zhouheiya and Transformers 4 includes at least cinema advertisements and viral videos, and the decoration of some Zhouheiya stores with Transformer themes.

"Zhouheiya has 400 stores in communities, airports, train stations and other major locations across China, which will work as easy promotion platforms for the film," she says. "This is one of the reasons why Paramount Pictures, the production company of the Transformer movies, was keen on firming up the alliance."

The studio has also incorporated some Chinese elements in Transformers 4, with an eye on the growing audience in China. Some of the fight scenes between the Autobots and the Decepticons, (main characters in the movie), were filmed in Wulong, Southwest China. Popular Chinese actress Li Bingbing plays a prominent role in the movie with Mark Wahlberg and four rising Chinese actors selected from a national TV reality show.

China Movie Channel, a TV channel affiliated to the state-run China Film Group, has helped Paramount with production-related work and will also distribute the film in China.

However, the film is still not an official co-production.

China prudently protects its film market. Every year only 34 foreign films can be imported on revenue-sharing basis for theatrical release. Foreign studios get no more than 25 percent of the box office receipts.

However, a co-produced film acknowledged by the top regulator, the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and TV, is treated as a domestic film and thus exempt from the quota system. Foreign studios, as a result, can share the revenue as per their agreements with Chinese partners.

Co-productions used to be perceived as an effective way to tap the Chinese market, where box-office receipts rose to 20 billion yuan ($3.2 billion) in 2013. This year, the revenue has reached 10 billion yuan till now, a 30 percent growth over the same period last year.

But many Hollywood companies have found that it is not that easy to be officially licensed as a co-production.

Since late 2010, SAPPRFT has tightened its control on the licensing of co-productions.

"A completely US story, some Chinese money, a few Chinese faces and some Chinese elements - these kind of films are not real co-productions," says Zhang Pimin, the former deputy chief of the SAPPRFT said in 2012.

Zhang had reiterated that in an officially acknowledged co-production, at least one-third of the lead cast should be Chinese, the story should have Chinese elements and there should be Chinese investors.

According to Chinese film producer Qiu Yan, in the absence of a proper rating system in China, filmmakers have to make sure that an audience aged from 4 to 80 can see the content they produce.

"On top of that, co-productions have to have organically integrated Chinese elements in the story. It takes a long time to get a script approved. Very often, investors are not that patient."

Ben Ji, a veteran film producer and managing director of Reach Glory says that very few films that adhere to the guidelines for co-productions are appreciated by Chinese or international audiences.

"Most of the usual prototypes are about foreign missionaries going to China, or pilots in World War II - I know at least three projects on that, or stories about Pearl S. Buck the American writer who lived in China," he says.

"People expect that a co-production is an easy subject that embodies Chinese stories and universal values. Putting these elements together necessarily does not mean it is a successful film."

Most official co-productions flop, and very few actually are hits. It is difficult to cite successful instances of a co-production that has captivated both audiences, experts say.

But Hollywood studios certainly do not want to ignore the great potential in the Chinese film industry, while Chinese filmmakers are eager and creative enough to find diversified alternative methods to realize collaborations with Hollywood.

"Today co-production is not a legal term," says Chinese film producer Wang Fan, who is making a film with an international cast and crew. "For me it could be in various forms. The teamwork of the cast and crew, the co-development of stories, product placement or the co-investment in a project can also be effective co-productions."

Product placement is a more popular approach.

In Sony's latest Spider-Man film, Chinese white spirits brand Jiannanchun's bottle and logo are displayed prominently on a billboard in New York City's Times Square. Chinese milk brand Yili and clothing brand Meters/Bonwe were featured in the earlier Transformers film. The milk's name was even mentioned in a conversation.

But more and more Chinese companies have been trying to be more extensively involved in Hollywood films than just having products placed in the story.

"To have your product appear in the film for seconds, that's the simplest co-operation now," says Wang Yifei, president of Herun Media, a leading branded content creative platform. "Clients are looking for more complicated projects now."

The company helped TCL appear in The Avengers in 2011 and Blue Moon, the domestic liquid soap, in The Smurfs 2, but its most recent case, the co-promotion of milk brand Mengniu and Rio 2, is a multi-layer cooperation that involves games on mobile phones and tablets, and on-site campaigns to win film tickets.

As Wang observes, Hollywood studios are now more active in teaming up with Chinese companies.

"It has been widely acknowledged that China will soon replace the US as the biggest film market in the world," Wang says. "Chinese people are sensitive to any Chinese elements in a Hollywood blockbuster. Most of the time they feel pleasant and proud, or at least amused to see these elements in top-notch American films. They smile when Chinese characters appear in Gravity, or a monk saved the earth in 2012. The major Hollywood studios also understand the importance of such elements."

Some Chinese companies have gone further to invest in English-language films that primarily target the global market. They are looking for more say in the storyline and financing.

Leading media group Huayi Brothers, for example, invested $150 million in Studio 8, set up by former Warner Brothers Film Studio chief Jeff Robinov. On the 2014-15 agenda of the company are two international productions featuring popular stars like Johnny Depp, Brad Pitt and Keanu Reeves.

Bruno Wu, a Chinese business mogul, recently walked the red carpet of the Cannes Film Festival, which ended on May 24, as Grace of Monaco, starring Nicole Kidman and co-produced by Wu, was the opening film of the festival.

According to Jin Huiran, PR manager of Wu's Seven Stars Film Studios, the company joined the project from the story development to production stage, and will distribute the film in China this summer.

Wu has also teamed with Justin Lin, director of the Fast and Furious series, to form Perfect Storm, a studio that plans to produce two or three films a year.

"Driven by profit, both Hollywood and Chinese filmmakers are trying whatever they can, when policies are not expected to be loosened in the near future," says Ben Ji of Reach Glory.

"The trend will go on, and it is not a bad thing to see more diversified and extensive collaborations between industry players. They may not meet the guidelines of authorities, but will certainly push the boundaries for more possibilities."

liuwei@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily European Weekly 05/30/2014 page8)