(Shaoxing wine)

Globalization has created a favorable economic environment for Hollywood studios to market their movies on a global scale. Globalization allows Hollywood to establish a highly systematic procedure for movie production, distribution, and exhibition in both domestic and global markets. However, the inherent contradictions of globalization pose challenges and uncertainty for Hollywood studios in some global markets, such as in China’s cinema market, due to the lack of control over film distribution and exhibition and due to the national government’s protectionist regulations and cultural policies on film industry.

ollywood is trying to strengthen Chinese audience’s trust and confidence in Hollywood movies, reintroduce the blockbuster consumerism culture to them, and possibly discourage pirated viewing via informal channels.

, Chinese filmmakers have presented a few successful made-in-China blockbusters which can battle with Hollywood blockbusters in terms of box-office performance. According to IMDb, the recent Chinese domestic movies Wolf Warrior 2 (2017) and Operation Red Sea (2018) grossed at US$870M and US$568M, respectively. Thus, China’s domestic film industry has started to set pressure on Hollywood studios and their blockbusters.

Before released to global markets, Hollywood transnational movies “must be subjected to increasingly thorough forms of cultural and ideological cleansing” to assure the mainstream inoffensiveness of the movies (Ezra & Rowden, 2006, p. 2).

It remains unclear when the renegotiation will resume and whether a new agreement will eventually be reached. These uncertainties call for Hollywood studios to continue complying with the current film import policies and regulations.

In recent years, China has been able to limit and control Hollywood movies’ share of China’s annual total box office to around 40% through specific protectionist regulations and policies such as import quotas, blackout periods, short promotion windows, and stacked-up releases

As for other blockbusters, the challenge is no longer to decide whether or not to include Chinese cultural specificity and elements but to figure out how to embrace and integrate them in the movie to attract and appease Chinese audiences.

However, the cultural and ideological differences between the Western and Chinese audiences pose a challenge for Hollywood studios:

Studios make movies transnational not only in terms of content but also in terms of production, by filming in English with international casts (Vanderschelden, 2007). Transnational movies utilize transnational superstars and international personnel and travel across borders more or less freely (Ezra & Rowden, 2006). Nowadays, as Crane (2014) has observed, “Hollywood films have become increasingly transnational” (p. 377).

Hollywood studios develop this type of transnational films, which reduce or eliminate cultural complexity, to be able to successfully participate in global cultural markets (Crane, 2014). Indeed, transnational films simplify cultural differences, expand references to other countries, and can be understood easily by foreign viewers (Crane, 2014; Higbee & Lim, 2010). Transnational films also combine national, international, and post-national elements together, and blend cultures and nations deliberately (Vanderschelden, 2007)

Accordingly, Hollywood studios need to transform their film productions to “transnational” ones to pursue economical success in other global film markets in which they encounter cultural challenges and resistance. To cater to the sensation-starved global audiences and maintain the dominance in other film cultures, Hollywood studios are committed to continuously producing costly blockbusters and cinematic spectacles by hybridizing their productions with other cultural specificity

Globalization of Hollywood film industry accelerates the opening-up of other countries’ domestic cinema markets (Jin, 2012)

“what is often expected of scholars in film studies is no longer a deep knowledge of any particular national cinema” but the “expertise in the Cinema (Hollywood cinema) and a general familiarity with world cinema including Asian cinema” (p. 454)