Chinese kung fu Market

The Hollywood film industry has become the most popular and globally dominant film market when compared to the rest of world. For instance, 90% of the films watched in Taiwan and 63% watched in Japan are labeled as foreign films coming directly from Hollywood. Laws have been created in foreign countries in order to help protect their films. The Chinese film industry must work in collaboration with Hollywood, so that their films will have a chance of achieving global recognition and fame. The development of a Hollywood group called the New International Division of Cultural Labor has resulted in some foreign films being distributed throughout the entire world. As a result of the (NICL) group three recent Chinese kung fu films have become extremely successful. The three successful films are Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Hero and House of the Flying Daggers.

It was shocking to learn how the Chinese film industry has been deteriorating rapidly ever since the 1980s. Close to 300 films were created back in the 1980s, and that number dropped dramatically to only 64 films in the year 2004. The main reason for this reduction is because Hollywood films were being distributed in China.

Hollywood has decided to add film production and marketing sites overseas to help alleviate the total cost of making a film. The success of these three well-known kung fu films prompted Hollywood to work with China and provide them with a production base.

This article explained how the film Hero has earned a tremendous amount of money because of its cinematic elements and outstanding story. It contained both originality and distinctiveness with made it stand out compared to previous kung fu films. On this blog, Mike explained more in depth about the film Hero and what was good about the film.

It was interesting to note that the films Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Hero and House of the Flying Daggers all operated in a similar manner as Hollywood when selecting their actors. The majority of the profitable Hollywood films have actors who are popular actors, which is what the Chinese film industry did also. This was due to the fact that the group NICL played a strong role in several aspects of these films. In these three films this was the first time multiple famous actors were casted to be in the same film. For example, kung fu films in the past would only cast one major actor like Jackie Chan to draw an audiences’ attention. Casting several stars in a film would ultimately increase its success rate domestically and overseas. Every step that these three films took were in line with those that Hollywood would normally follow. The article stated, “This trend indicates that the new Chinese martial arts films have become more like Hollywood films in that they are now transitional and global in terms of labor and production” (Chung, 419). It has been recognized that Chinese films do have the possibility of being distributed over the entire world and making a great deal of money in return.

Chinese kung fu films are starting to emerge more often in both the United States and in many other countries. This has only happened because of the direct intervention of Hollywood in the Chinese film industry. By collaborating with Hollywood, Chinese films are now much likely to be well produced, have a wide distribution and be profitable.

Work Cited:

Chung, Peichi. "Hollywood domination of the Chinese kung fu market." Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 8.3 (2007): 414-24. Print.