The End of Hollywood

Hollywood has a problem

No one wants to see its movies

No one in the industry can seemingly find work

And the future doesn’t look much better

The story of how we got here starts almost two decades ago

When Americans stopped another activity

Buying DVDs

Hollywood’s solution?

China

The Pivot to China

In the early 2000s, Americans began to slowly stopped going to the movies. Hollywood was able to make up loss in revenue through DVDs and TV residuals. By 2010, those markets were starting to dry up as well. In 2008, China burst onto the global stage with its impressive opening ceremony for the Summer Olympics in Beijing. Hollywood thought the Chinese audience had arrived and was ready to throw them a lifeline​.

Eager to cash in on millions of new viewers, studios doubled down on spectacle-driven franchises and sequels at the expense of original storytelling. Studios were worried that dialogue-heavy dramas would likely get lost in translation, and shifted their focus to visual extravaganzas. These bets at the time made sense, the extra box office revenue from China could spell the difference between a flop and a major success. Studios had to ensure their content to “traveled well” internationally​.

In practice, this meant assembly-line filmmaking: every year brought more superhero sequels, “Fast & Furious” installments, and franchise spin-offs engineered to captivate global audiences, especially Chinese moviegoers. Hollywood executives spoke of franchise building as if it were foolproof and self-renewing – a kind of creative recycling that could be repeated indefinitely. By 2016, the international market (led by China) made up roughly 60% of Hollywood’s box office, up from only 30% in 1991​.

Appeasing the Dragon: Censor-Approved, China-Friendly Films

To fully tap China’s market, Hollywood went beyond just favoring blockbusters – it actively altered content to appease Chinese censors and tastes. Studios “bent over backward” to avoid China’s red lines, often preemptively sanitizing scripts​. In a telling example, the 2010 remake of Red Dawn originally featured Chinese invaders, until Chinese officials caught wind. The studio spent over $1 million in post-production to digitally change the villains to North Koreans, rather than risk angering Beijing​. Never mind that a North Korean invasion made no sense; studios had to preserve access to China’s audience no matter the cost.