Hollywood goes East

It’s kind of surreal being here.’ The general sentiment, no doubt, of most people on planet Earth right now, but the specific words of Matt Damon at the world première of his latest film earlier this year. The reason for his befuddlement? The film was The Great Wall, for which he had moved to China for half a year with his family. But the première was taking place beneath the extravagant pagoda of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard. From actual China to Los Angeles’ idea of China — no wonder Damon found it weird.

Yet, as so often happens in Hollywood, the weird could well become the way of things. The Great Wall and its première are the result of what is becoming one of the most significant partnerships in show business, between the American and the Chinese film industries. Other actors will have to make the 6,500-mile journey between LA and Shanghai.

Strangely, this is a partnership founded on mistrust. For years, China’s communist regime took a dim view of the luminous art form of cinema. The only movies that it really tolerated were works of propaganda, and there was certainly no room for anything from the capitalist, consumerist US of A. Which might have worked, had it not been for the fact that no one wanted to pay to see propaganda. In 1994, to support ailing theatres, the state agreed a revenue-sharing deal to import The Fugitive — the first time Hollywood had been let into the Chinese market for 45 years. The film made what, at that time and in that place, was an impressive $3 million, but it also set a precedent. Nowadays, after a landmark 2012 deal signed by vice-president Joe Biden and premier Xi Jinping, and urged on by the dictates of the World Trade Organisation, China imports 34 foreign films a year through similar deals.