Mulan's Release in China: Notes on the Chinese Box Office

Recently looking at the coverage of the box office again I have found myself considering the case of China again. While in the U.S. Mulan has gone straight to streaming, Mulan has come out in theaters in China--again, to results considered underwhelming, even given the industry's lowered expectations in the wake of the pandemic.

It is, of course, not the first Disney production to underperform there. There is, of course, the notorious case of the Star Wars saga.

As Alan Yuhas' article observes, this was a significant function of the fact that, given when the originals came out (the late 1970s, the early 1980s), China did not share in the moment. The result was that there was no pull from nostalgia. The article's assessment usefully touches on something else, too--that the series was relatively inaccessible and unengaging to newcomers (as compared with, for example, the information-lighter Marvel superhero films that have done so well in that country).

The disregard of all of this, of course, testifies to something bigger, even more apparent in the fumbling performance with Mulan. Much as we hear about the fuss over studio efforts to craft something that will appeal in that market, the reality is a profound laziness and obtuseness about the audience. Hollywood, and its sycophants in the entertainment press, seem to forget that while China represents a huge market where successful American films have taken in hundreds of millions of dollars (Avengers: Endgame took in over $600 million), China's own film industry is making plenty of blockbusters of its own, and indeed king of the country's own market. In 2019 Avengers: Endgame was only the #3 earner, with China's own Ne Zha and The Wandering Earth each outgrossing it, and together taking in some $1.4 billion. Eight of the top ten films in China were homegrown productions, each of which grossed $200 million or more. Of the twenty-three films that broke the $100 million barrier, fifteen were domestic Chinese productions.

In short, China's market is not simply Hollywood's for the asking. And I suspect that with plenty of homegrown blockbusters having historical themes, pitching a Disney live-action Mulan--one really made in line with American sensibilities (or rather, Hollywood sensibilities), while putting on a very clumsy show of pandering to what they think Chinese filmgoers want in astonishing disregard for innumerable basics of a story and a history that Chinese movie-watchers know very well (really, I suspect, one half-decent historian could and would have fixed up a lot of this for a half-decent consulting fee if the people in charge were capable of listening)--is the sort of thing that will sound much more astute to occupants of board rooms than to anyone of even median intelligence.