But hand in hand with playing to Chinese viewers comes working with Chinese censors. While experts say that the navigating Chinese rules and mores is still more of an art than a science, it’s generally accepted that
red flags are raised when you disparage the image of the People’s Army or police, show obscene or vulgar content, feature ghosts or the supernatural, show mistreatment of prisoners, advertise religious extremism, display excessive drinking or smoking, or oppose the spirit of law.
And if you dare go off script while shooting in China, prepare for punishment. According to Cain, during a shoot a few years ago in Shanghai, the director decided to change things up a bit and film a take with an extra holding a camcorder pretending to tape a movie at a theater.
Sensitive to their reputation as the source of a large chunk of the world’s movie piracy, China told the team their movie would be shut down.
“We begged and pleaded and promised to keep the film on track,” Cain told us.
“The lesson there was that there is always someone watching.”
Veteran Asian cinema expert and former Village Roadshow Pictures President Greg Coote emphasized that the Chinese
“don’t have a sense of humor” when it comes to meddling with historical facts, as Hollywood often does, and that to gain Chinese approval, Hollywood moviemakers need to be cognizant of cultural concerns in order to not offend, from recognizing that Chinese are prohibited from carrying guns, to knowing that exceeding the speed limit is frowned upon. (Note to "Fast and Furious.")
A well-placed source within Paramount Pictures said that last year a revived, 3-D version of the iconic U.S. fighter pilot film “Top Gun” was submitted to the Chinese censorship board. But alas, the Tom Cruise, pro-American military movie was met with no response at all. The New York Times reported that 20th Century Fox was able to shuffle its hit “Life of Pi” through with only modification to the “religion is darkness” line in the film, while Sony Pictures’ “Karate Kid” was rejected in 2009 even after changes were made, reportedly because its villain was Chinese.
“Mathematically it has to happen that China becomes the number one box office, its growth is extraordinary. But there are so many ifs and buts as to how and if it will change the way we make movies here,” said Coote. “Sometimes the Chinese will just arbitrarily take a movie out of the theater after a week or two, it happened with ‘Avatar,’ so they could play a propaganda film.”
Quentin Tarantino and the teams from Columbia Pictures and the Weinstein Company learned that hard way a few weeks ago when “Django Unchained,” which was modified to remove certain language and scenes to gain censor approval, was unceremoniously plucked from theaters without any explanation. The speculation is that one scene involving distant, full-frontal nudity initially missed the eye of Chinese officials and wasn’t picked up until after the fact.
So as Marvel Studios creates unique Chinese-crafted versions of their hit films, movies like “Transformers” shoot on location there, DreamWorks Animation takes animation jobs from L.A.for the next “Kung Fu Panda 3” to a new Shanghai studio, and actors like Keanu Reeves forge partnerships with Chinese companies to co-finance future film projects – it is clear that Hollywood knows there's a new, really big player in Tinseltown.
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