The script, by a team of six Hollywood writers including Tony Gilroy of the Bourne franchise, borrows a legendary beast from Jorge Luis Borges: In his Book of Imaginary Beings, the Argentine writer imagined the zoomorphic taotie figures on Chinese bronzes as two-headed monsters animated by greed. The concept for the film actually has a certain literary flair. He plays a European mercenary single-handedly fighting off gruesome monsters with a bow and arrow, while discovering the superiority of Chinese technology and esprit de corps in a film that offers a satisfying mythological framework for Sino-American relations.

So this time, the formula is reversed and it's Matt Damon who is offered as a sop to Western tastes. co-production, which isn't subject to the quota: With a budget reported at $150-million (U.S.), The Great Wall is now the biggest example ever. They weren't particularly well-defined.Īnother approach to penetrating the Asian market is the Chinese-U.S. Committed to expanding global markets in an era of shrinking audiences, Hollywood needs those spots and is increasingly willing to cater to Chinese tastes to secure them: You may have noticed the pair of martial-arts characters inserted into Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, for example. The movie poster says the Great Wall of China is 5,500 miles long and took 1,700 years to build, before asking provocatively 'What were they trying to keep out?' The answer, of course, is foreigners.Įven today, there are strict government quotas on the number of foreign films that can be screened in China.

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