4/19/2024 0 Comments Chinese movie production companies![]() ![]() It is a scene to warm the hearts of Hollywood executives. But US productions are losing market share to domestic rivals with bigger budgets, sharper scripts-and government backing “Then we’ll decide who we work with as strategic partners.Hollywood is making more money in China’s booming film market than ever. What’s the story? What’s the target audience and the best language to tell that story in,” says Ying. We will not be limited by what is traditionally thought as local production, co-production or international projects. “CMC, and maybe other Chinese movie companies, in the future will think of themselves more like studios. Innovation may also be the road ahead as Chinese cinema reconnects with the rest of the world after a hiatus. Instead, the producers have had to try marketing innovations, such as a swimming event in London, in order to make the appropriate splash. The SAG-AFTRA strike meant that Statham is not participating in the movie’s promotion and that Wu has limited himself to marketing within China. Jason does, so Wu Jing certainly should, as well,” she says. This one, it was pretty synergistic,” says Avery, who is already lining up another Chinese co-venture as her next non-“Meg” picture.Īvery also confirmed that Wu has a back-end deal and will participate in the film’s global, not just its Chinese, business. “Everybody talks about how difficult is, but it wasn’t so much on this. We just were telling a story, like ‘Jurassic Park,’ we weren’t going near anything that could be controversial,” she says. Eventually, only second unit photography in Hainan, Shanghai and Qingdao was done in the People’s Republic.Īvery also offers other insights into the relative ease of getting “Meg 2” made. Phuket, Thailand, provided the tropical setting for the third act’s carnage and resolution.ĭoing principal photography overseas also went a long way to resolving the difficulty of filming during COVID-locked China. ![]() ![]() Ying explains that on “Meg 2: The Trench” Chinese companies were the majority investors, that less than a third of the cast and crew are Chinese and that most of the production took place in studios near London, making use of the U.K.’s location production incentives. “I would not frame as a co-production, but as a Chinese local production.” Albeit one made in English for global consumption. “The rule of thumb criteria for co-production is that a third of the financing, a third of the production and a third of the personnel have to come from China,” says Ying. While Jason’s character is all gut instinct.” Everything Wu’s character does is a calculated risk. “He is also a father figure for his niece and had to deal with this Western guy,” says Avery, referencing Statham. She credits Wu’s directing experience and his willingness to challenge the production team as helping to ensure that Chinese elements and nuances were respected throughout - details such as the artifacts in his character’s office to the how a Chinese man would process the death of his father. Each one of Wu’s last five films did $400-$800 million at the box office in China alone,” says Avery. That Ying had a professional relationship with him would seal the deal. Avery says that Wu - China’s biggest male star of the past five years, with credits including “Wolf Warrior” and its sequel (which he also directed) and “The Battle at Lake Changjin” - was always her first choice for the role. Killing off two of the main Chinese characters from the first film (one on screen, the other in the five-year interval since) meant that finding a suitable Chinese co-star was essential. In the version seen by Variety, the two major Chinese characters - Wu’s affable scientist Zhang Jiuming and his smart-but-disobedient niece (played again by ‘Sophia’ Cai Shuya) - smoothly switch between Mandarin Chinese and English whenever it is appropriate. The film is directed by the U.K.s Ben Wheatley (“Free Fire,” “Kill List”) and is presented predominantly in English. That puts the hungry and horny(!) predators on a collision course with a deep-sea rescue mission that is already challenged by the bad-guy mineral miners that Statham’s character had once previously put behind bars. The supposedly domesticated adolescent meg soon connects with more of its kind, which have breached the cold layers that had kept the species out of human contact for millions of years. The narrative picks up smoothly a few years after the events of 2018’s Jon Turteltaub-directed “The Meg,” with a megalodon (literally a “big-toothed” prehistoric shark) escaping from captivity at an oceanographic research station. ![]()
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