Ha.
Jurassic World 2 Made Almost As Much Money In China Opening Day As The Last Jedi In Its Entire Run
“Jurassic World: Lost Kingdom” made about $35 million in China on opening day, while “Last Jedi” made only $42 million. China is of course an increasingly important market for major motion pictures, but the Star Wars franchise is having serious trouble there: “Solo” only made $10 million.
There are couple ways Hollywood could deal with this:
- Do better at making movies that appeal to the Chinese market. The “Star Wars” franchise didn’t play in China back in the day, so the sequel trilogy doubtless doesn’t make much sense to the Chinese market. They have no built-in nostaligia for it. On the other hand, even if the Chinese hadn’t seen the original “Jurassic Park,” the recent reboots feature dinosaurs. And those don’t need translation.
- Forget about the Chinese market, and make movies more likely to appeal to the western/US market. This would imply “smarter” movies, since you need not dumb down the chitchat and plot so that it will be palatable when translated into a foreign language and displayed in a foreign culture.
Me, I’d prefer #2. It might mean lower potential worldwide box office… but the fraction of the box office take that the studio actual gets is fairly small, so it would seem to be a minimal loss. And it need not cost much of *anything* to improve the plot and dialog.
There is another interesting note. A few weeks ago, this bit of journalistic cancer was posted:
As ‘Solo: A Star Wars Story’ Flops, Are Movies About White Men Box Office Poison?
Where the author attempts to make the case that the world is becoming a progressive feminist paradise where straight white men are finally being shown the door out of the culture they created, to be replaced with… well, anyone but straight white males. “Solo,” “King Arthur” and “The Mummy” are presented as examples of White Male Leads Ruining Movies.
And then along comes “Jurassic World 2,” with Extremely White Guy Chris Pratt in the lead and to all accounts it’s making buckets of money in China and elsewhere and is expected to rake in the monies once it hits the US market (if anyone can explain why foreign markets got it *two* *weeks* before the US, speak up). At the same time there’s “Hotel Artemis,” which many people compared to the “John Wick” movies (starring Very White Keanu Reeves). “Wick” made $89 million on a $30million budget… not great, but not bad for a relatively small movie. “Wick 2” bumped the budget to $40 million… and raked in $171 million. In contrast, “Hotel Artemis,” which features a woman and a black guy as the main leads, cost a paltry $15 million to make… and has so far brought in an even more paltry $4.8 million… of which a whopping $43 *thousand* is the foreign take. And then there’s “Avengers: Infinity War,” which has a whole bunch of leads, but most of them are White Guys, and it has so far made over $2 BILLION worldwide. And there’s “Deadpool 2” which had a Messed Up White Guy Who Makes Fun Of Diversity Goals as the main character, and it has so far brought in a bit over two thirds of a billion dollars.
So the claim that “white guy = box office poison” seems ill founded at best. What with the cultural Marxism, political correctness, SJWs and all the rest of that rubbish, perhaps there will come a day when having a white guy lead is truly the kiss of death for a quality motion picture.
