Enter the dragon: how Australia became China’s gateway to Hollywood

Life

“Most Australian films cannot be sustainable without exporting; and other than a [film like] Lion, most Australian films, if they’re local stories, are not going to travel.”

There’s little in the way of a local story in Guardians of the Tomb. Prominence is given to Chinese lead Li Bingbing and Americans Grammer and Kellan Lutz, with Australian Shane Jacobson in support. The most identifiably Australian reference comes in an animated prologue that sees a fleet of ancient Chinese seafarers trading with Indigenous Australians. In one simple gesture, the movie explains away its central conceit – the unlikely presence of funnel-web spiders in the middle of a Chinese desert, while also pointing to a history of cultural exchange in which the film itself takes part.

Kellan Lutz in Guardians of the Tomb, which was made in Australia. Photograph: Arclight Films

As a co-production, Guardians of the Tomb is not restricted by China’s import quotas (limited to around 34 foreign films each year) and the foreign backers are entitled to a higher percentage of the Chinese box office takings than they would receive otherwise (42% instead of 25%). The film debuted in China on 2,500 cinema screens, which is more screens than Australia has in the whole country. The economic advantage is clear, especially when it puts Australian jobs on the table.

The 2017 Jackie Chan movie Bleeding Steel, not an official co-production, also received Australian support. The Sydney-shot film – the biggest-budget Chinese movie ever filmed in Australia – was attracted to the state by the government’s Made in NSW fund, which touted the 200 production jobs the film would provide.

And yet like The Great Wall, both Bleeding Steel and Guardians of the Tomb found a muted reception at the Chinese box office, with the Chan vehicle earning US$46m in December 2017 and Tomb collecting only US$8m since it opened in China in mid-January.

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‘Sometimes they’re not sure if they’re a Chinese film or a western film’

While the Australian audience for a film like Tomb seems to be a distant consideration for its backers, a small market does exist in Australia for Chinese cinema. Tomb’s Australian release arrives through Asia Releasing, a distribution company that services Chinese communities across the west. The CEO, Milt Barlow, describes an appetite for Chinese movies among the Chinese diaspora that has emerged in the past decade, in step with China’s burgeoning industry.

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