Asianization of Hollywood

For a lot of people, myself included, when you think of the film industry you think only of America and the glamour of Hollywood. Any other countries film industry seems miniscule and unimportant next to the over publicized actors, directors and films coming straight out of Hollywood. This week’s reading by Klein (2004) writes about the influence of Hollywood films on Asian culture whilst also visits the influence that the Asian film industry has had on Hollywood. 

Klein writes that ‘we can see one kind of integration taking place in the globalization of Hollywood’s audience... making movies primarily for people who live outside the USA...for people who live in Asia (2004 pg 363). Remakes of films from both American to Asian formats and Asian to American formats are continually being made. Squidoo.com offers list of the 12 best American remakes of Horror films and shows trailers to both of the versions which is extremely entertaining to watch. The prime example that comes to mind in regards to American remakes of Asian films is horror movies. Just think of the most memorable horror movies you have seen recently and I can guarantee that almost all of the extremely popular Hollywood horror movies, such as The Ring and the Grudge, were first made in Asian format. 

The Asianization of Hollywood in the 1990’s meant that for the first time ‘Asian markets began generating revenues for the studios’ and today studios executives have ‘their eyes trained on China and India’ as potential markets to crack into (Klein 2004 pg 364). Profits for Hollywood continue to grow outside of the USA and ‘today the average studio production earns well over 50% of its revenue abroad’ (Klein 2003). This explains why Asia continues to have an impact on the Hollywood film industry as Asia has been realised as a great market to gain profit from. Jones (2002) wrote that ‘Hollywood films claim about 60 percent of the ticket sales in China while being limited to only about 30 percent of the screen time’ (cited in Klein 2004).  This statistic shows that while Hollywood films are increasingly becoming ‘asianised’ to gain profit, Asia is also accepting the Hollywood film style and are enjoying it.

References

Klein, C 2004, Martial Arts and Globalisation of US and Asian film industries, comparative American studies, vol 2, no 3, pp 360-384

Klein, C 2003, The Asia Factor in Hollywood, Yale Global Online 

Image Reference

http://www.squidoo.com/12-best-us-remakes-of-asian-movies