By Matt Donovan (MIA ’23)

Lovers of sequels, cinematic universes, and reboots were spoiled with choices in the United States in 2021. “Jungle Cruise,” a new entry in a rich tradition of ride-based movies, came to us from a ride at Disney World. Box office receipts show that sequels, remakes, and the like squeezed out all but “Free Guy” and “Candyman” from the top 20 earners in the United States. Major studio comedies, previously sure to appear in the highest echelons of grossers, are now conspicuously absent.

This is not so in China, and seemingly not because American movies, in general, failed to enthuse audiences. The charms of “Fast and Furious 9: The Fast Saga” and “Godzilla vs. Kong” still managed to earn Universal and Warner Bros. $217 million and $189 million respectively, good for top ten box office finishes. Elsewhere in the top twenty, though, we find a spate of Chinese-made comedies cozying up to these CGI behemoths. Predictably unfamiliar to Western moviegoers, these comedies include “Hi, Mom,” “Warm Hug,” and “Detective Chinatown 3.”   

“Hi, Mom” is a fantasy-comedy-drama where a woman ventures back in time to befriend her mother. While the third-highest grossing film of 2021 worldwide, it made all but 11 of its $822 million within China and it ranked as the second-highest earning non-English language film of all time. 

The Chinese film industry isn’t struggling like its American cousin to make movies like “Terms of Endearment” compete alongside “Star Wars” and entries from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Why is this so?

One theory goes like this: comedy is an inherently regional genre, and since American studios increasingly rely on international markets, China included, comedies aren’t reliable breadwinners any longer. No American comedy that is not animated or a crossover, such as an action-comedy or a superhero comedy, has appeared in China’s top 50 earning movies over the past five years. By contrast, action movies, comic book films, and other spectacle-based entertainment produced in the U.S. regularly appear among the top 20 grossers in China.

Ensuring content sings to Chinese audiences is all the more compelling to American studios given the massive potential of the Chinese market. In the United States, “Godzilla vs. Kong” screened in 3,804 theaters. In China, it appeared in an estimated 38,437. Proportionally, this meant one screening for approximately every 36,432 Chinese, compared to one for every 106,841 Americans. It seems that while the romantic notion of the American moviegoing ritual is long dead now, it has been exhumed across the Pacific. It is a small wonder, then, that Chinese studios can rely on their ascendant domestic audience to turn out for films that will succeed only in China, comedies included.

For American studio executives, broadly enjoyed spectacles like superhero movies, not parochial comedies and dramas, offer the surest bets in China’s irresistibly massive movie exhibition industry. In this, as in many other ways, the American film industry, like any other commodity, must now tailor its products for international consumption more than ever before.

Matt Donovan (MIA ’23) is a staff writer pursuing a concentration in Economic and Political Development and a regional specialization in Latin America. Before SIPA, he was a high school teacher, where he subjected kids to tangents on movies, art, and history.