AILSA CHANG, HOST:
Right now, the U.S. and China might not have the best geopolitical relationship, but when it comes to movies, it has been a long - though up and down - romance. Indicator host Adrian Ma has more.
ADRIAN MA, BYLINE: The romance between Hollywood and China begins way back in the early 1900s, the silent movie era. Although movies were being made in Shanghai, audiences were most drawn to the American imports, which tended to be flashier and more sophisticated. But this early romance with Hollywood came to an abrupt end in 1950.
YING ZHU: A massive campaign was launched to discredit Hollywood films.
MA: That's Ying Zhu, a professor at Columbia University and author of the book "Hollywood In China." For decades, the only films being made were ones that served the Communist Party's interests.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: In response to Chairman Mao's call, millions of Chinese young people...
MA: Eventually, though, the Mao era came to an end, and in the 1980s, China was opening up to the world. Its movie industry, though, had basically withered under government control.
ZHU: So the policymakers looked around. They decided that we had to really build up the Chinese film market. And what do they do? They went to Hollywood.
MA: In the early 1990s, China was going through major economic reforms. It was expanding trade with the U.S. and other countries, and one part of that trade relationship was movies. Erich Schwartzel covers the film industry for the Wall Street Journal.
ERICH SCHWARTZEL: The first movie that was kind of formally accepted into Chinese theaters was "The Fugitive," starring Harrison Ford.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE FUGITIVE")
HARRISON FORD: (As Richard Kimble) I'm not going to turn myself in. I need help.
MA: "The Fugitive" was a hit. Though at first, Erich says, these Hollywood flicks trickling into China didn't make much money. That would soon change, though, as millions of people moved from rural areas of China into the cities, and the country's growing middle class developed an appetite for big-screen entertainment. And by the 2000s, Hollywood saw their revenue from China soar.
SCHWARTZEL: You're seeing 20-, 30-, 40% year-over-year growth. If you're running a Hollywood studio, if you can add 100-, 200-, $300 million to the global gross by getting it into China, you absolutely will.
MA: And in some cases, studios bent over backwards to appeal to Chinese moviegoers. Erich says one of the best examples is "Transformers: Age Of Extinction."
SCHWARTZEL: Mark Wahlberg uses Chinese protein powder at one point. He goes to an ATM in the middle of Texas, and it's a Chinese bank.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character, speaking Cantonese).
MA: Now, did studios get criticized for bowing to government censorship and pandering to Chinese audiences? Sure. But what did they care? They were raking in the RMBs, baby.
SCHWARTZEL: It seemed at the time like it would be that way forever.
MA: An early sign the romance between Hollywood and China might not be forever came in 2008. That year, Dreamworks released an animated film called "Kung Fu Panda."
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "KUNG FU PANDA")
JACK BLACK: (As Po) Whose skills were the stuff of legend.
SCHWARTZEL: The authorities in China saw it, and they actually convened political summits to discuss "Kung Fu Panda" and ask the question, why didn't we make this ourselves?
MA: And so they put into legislation that the government would increase support for China's homegrown animation industry. This was just one of many government policies that helped propel China's movie industry into a new phase. One person with a front-row seat to it all was Dayyan Eng. Dayyan was born in Taiwan but grew up in the U.S., and around 1995, he moved to China to study at the Beijing Film Academy. When he graduated, he thought about returning to the U.S., but then...
DAYYAN ENG: I got a phone call from someone who'd seen my student short film, and they were like, hey, do you direct TV commercials? Yes, I do (laughter). Yeah, I will now (laughter), you know?
MA: Over the years, he says he's seen Chinese audiences' tastes evolve and says eventually, they got kind of bored with the same old American superhero flicks.
ENG: We also have domestic films getting better budgets, and they're starting to tell stories that are more interesting to local audiences.
MA: As a result, Hollywood's revenue from Chinese box offices began a yearslong slide. Meanwhile, China has made its own blockbusters. A recent prime example is "Ne Zha 2."
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "NE ZHA 2")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character, speaking Chinese).
MA: This animated movie based on a Chinese folk tale hit theaters in January. So far, it's brought in over $2 billion, making it the highest grossing animated film ever.
Adrian Ma, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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