A Hollywood Rapprochement with China? Thoughts on Zootopia 2's Gross

Last year's box office was by most accounts a significant disappointment for Hollywood--most obviously for those stubbornly refusing to recognize the extent to which the American cinematic market had shrunk structurally, but this also going for those more reconciled to lowered expectations. By the same token it is evident that another year in which Hollywood stuck to its familiar franchise-mining, tentpole-centered strategy and was punished for it over and over and over again with underperformers has done little to prompt any serious rethinking on the part of the studio executives about how they go about their business. They seem more careful (or at least, penny-pinching) with their expenditure on production, more careful about non-production costs like promotion--but within the established framework. In a similar spirit of tweaking rather than overhauling they may be becoming more respectful of that market they treated rather high-handedly for some years, mainland China.

To recap the relevant history: China's sheer size, growing affluence and increasing openness to imports of foreign popular culture has made "the China market" a considerable prize for decades, with all of this developing to the point that it was rather an exciting prospect for Hollywood by the '10s. Thus did a Chinese company co-produce Iron Man 3, and the movie go on to gross $121 million in that country. Thus were movies that underperformed in the U.S. and elsewhere saved by their earnings in the Chinese market--in the case of Pacific Rim enough so to get the movie a sequel from producers banking heavily on Chinese revenues the next time (which was a hit in China if not elsewhere), just part of a pattern of making movies with China much in mind that saw a big-budget Warcraft movie made in 2016, while still other movies incorporated elements pointedly intended to appeal to Chinese viewers, like including Chinese stars in the cast of American productions (as seen in the Independence Day sequel of that same year). Thus was China also a crucial prop to major franchises such as Fast and Furious (installments seven through nine, plus the Hobbs & Shaw spin-off, all grossed more in China than North America), all as Disney had great successes there with its various films, including its Marvel movies (with Avengers: Endgame grossing a whopping $600 million in that market, as altogether the Marvel films of just that year grossed $1 billion in Chinese theaters). And thus was it the case that Hollywood became involved with Chinese productions at a high level, Hollywood A-lister Matt Damon starring in China's most audacious bid to be a player in the global film market to date, The Great Wall.

Of course, it wasn't all onward and upward. There were sneers in parts of the American press about "China pandering," in cases raising quite serious charges about Hollywood compromising its filmmaking to please Chinese officials, and especially the ways in which this might have been linked to genuine human rights violations, but the criticism much more often of a petty nationalistic variety (as seen in Vanity Fair), all as if the American media of course approved American movies doing well in China, it closed ranks against movies going the other way (as seen in the exaggerated criticism of The Great Wall). Indeed, amid trade war American observers accused China of becoming increasingly protectionist against film imports through backdoor ways like affording American films narrow, ill-timed release windows constraining promotion and distribution opportunities (with, of course, no one making the observation about stone-throwing in glasses houses), while suggesting that Chinese collaboration with American filmmaking had been in bad faith somehow, the Chinese interested in the relationship only insofar as they had occasion to assimilate foreign skills (again, rather sanctimoniously, as business is done out of self-interest rather than for "friendship's" sake). Meanwhile for its part Hollywood became less considerate of the Chinese market, with Disney exemplary as it released a slew of Marvel Cinematic Universe movies that offended Chinese officialdom's sensibilities in various ways, with the pattern extending to Disney's animated releases as well--as seen in the inclusion of an LGBTQ+ element in Lightyear, and Galyn Susman's "woke cultural imperialist" sneer about "backward countries."

The result is that not only did Hollywood-China collaboration collapse, but one simply did not see Hollywood movies doing the kind of sensational business they did in China in the 2010s for many years. Indeed, in the whole 2020-2024 period only one American-made film made so much as $200 million, F9 in 2021, with even movies for which their producers would have plausibly expected robust earnings doing poorly, often enough so as to skew their overall business--underperformance in China having its part in the disappointment that was Ant-Man 3, while in spite of the colossal business the first Aquaman did in China Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom made a mere $65 million in that market. The result is that Disney's November 2025 release Zootopia 2 making Avengers: Endgame-type money in China ($583 million) is a big moment for Hollywood--one reflective of the effort Disney made to get back into the Chinese market (which included a personal visit by Iger himself). Contributing mightily to that film's total gross, such that it is my prediction for the winner of the "Most Valuable Blockbuster" title in Deadline's tournament this spring, its profits are sorely needed by a Disney which had to absorb the blows to its bottom line and its prestige represented by the failures of Snow White, Elio and three disappointing Marvel Cinematic Universe movies in a row. And if it seems the press is not making much of this yet, I cannot imagine this display of Chinese openness to American film, and reminder to Hollywood of just how well it can do in that market given the chance, are isolated instances--the more in as there are evidences that Washington's trade war-mindedness against China is losing some of its edge (consider the change in chip export policy), and a Hollywood which has been taking such a financial beating for six years that I can't help wonder if we won't one day find it a scene of abrupt Enron-like collapse, as even its dumbest decision-makers begin to admit that it desperately needs the market--the more in as ticket sales represent just a part of what is to be made in the age of television, streaming and to-the-hilt merchandising.