Chinese audiences really love American movies that have big car chases, adorable dogs, Vin Diesel – and, possibly, Ruby Rose.
Lintao Zhang / Getty Images
When Transformers: The Last Knight debuted this week, the box office headlines were not kind. The fifth movie of director Michael Bay's paean to alien robots and visual chaos earned the worst domestic debut for the franchise, with just $68.5 million over its first five days in theaters. By comparison, 2014's Transformers: Age of Extinction earned $100 million domestically over its first three days of release.
With domestic interest cratering, Paramount's plan to expand the Transformers movies into their own cinematic universe — starting with a Bumblebee spinoff reportedly set to star Hailee Steinfeld — appeared to be on shaky financial ground.
And then the Chinese box office numbers for Transformers: The Last Knight came in: $125.3 million, the biggest Chinese debut in the franchise's history.
This is becoming a pattern for Hollywood: A movie either disappoints or flops in the US and Canada, only to see its box office fortunes lifted by a robust theatrical performance in China. The Chinese market has become increasingly central to Hollywood's financial health over the last several years — according to the Associated Press, as of Dec. 2016, China has surpassed the US as the country with the greatest number of total movie screens (40,917, to be exact).
Financially, the biggest box office market overall is still the US and Canada. Studios are only privy to 25% of box office earnings in China (as opposed to roughly half of domestic earnings), and that same AP report noted that many movies in China are playing to empty theaters.
Still, China remains the best opportunity for growth for Hollywood's major studios, especially with domestic ticket sales largely stagnating or in decline over the past decade.
As China's importance to Hollywood continues to grow, more Hollywood films will continue to perform better in China than at home. Here's a list that exemplifies that trend, in order of what percentage of a film's global gross was earned in China.
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales
Total Chinese gross (% of total): $172,200,000 (25.4%)
Total domestic gross (% of total): $160,161,569 (23.6%)
Total global gross: $679,278,452
Johnny Depp's box office clout has been a dim shadow of its former glory for a while in the US — and allegations of spousal abuse last year certainly did not help. But he remains a draw internationally — particularly in China, which accounted for roughly 25% of the fifth Pirates film's global box office take. The movie has also pulled in a significant bounty in Russia, Germany, the UK, France, and South Korea.
Disney
The Mummy
Total Chinese gross: $89,300,000 (26%)
Total domestic gross: $68,744,165 (20%)
Total global gross: $343,933,058
Like Depp, Tom Cruise's star power is now much greater with foreign audiences than at home: The paltry domestic box office take of his latest film, the who-asked-for-this remake of The Mummy, accounts for just 20% of the movie's global gross, with China accounting for 26%. Universal Pictures is planning to use Cruise, Depp, and The Mummy co-star Russell Crowe to launch its really-who-asked-for-this Dark Universe franchise, and the studio is clearly banking on the pull each of these stars still has with foreign audiences to make it work.
Universal Pictures
via BuzzFeed/Travel