You are making the mistake of assuming that because the median Chinese citizen is ideologically opposed to the American left in a technical sense, Disney’s localizing movies for China means that Disney isn’t a captured institution. But in fact the American left cares very little about the beliefs and attitudes of the average Chinese person, as they compete in an almost entirely distinct political arena. So major movie companies being willing to sell movies there is not much evidence of anything.
More telling than Disney’s localizing for China at all is the fact that they refuse to make high budget, well marketed movies catering to (for example) the Christian right, even though such a niche has proven to be very profitable for independent filmmakers, and in fact ought to be easier for Disney to cater to as an American company.
More telling than Disney’s localizing for China at all is the fact that they refuse to make high budget, well marketed movies catering to (for example) the Christian right, even though such a niche has proven to be very profitable for independent filmmakers [...]
What’s profitable for an independent filmmaker isn’t necessarily a market opportunity worth pursuing for Disney. Disney, Paramount, and the other major studios operate on an entirely different scale than independent filmmakers. Given the amount of corporate overhead that they have, a film that returns less than several hundred million dollars in profit, mostly due to merchandising and theme park tie-ins, in some ways, just isn’t worth it.
It’s not just the Christian right who are being neglected by this reality. Pretty much every film genre other than action/adventure and superhero has suffered. When was the last time we saw a major studio fund a small-to-medium budget comedy? Or romance? Drama still gets funding because those films win awards, but it’s unclear even how long that will last.
Okay, fine, maybe not Disney specifically, but Hollywood is perfectly capable of making explicitly political movies like Knives Out iff they are explicitly politically leftist. Chris Evans and Ana de Armas are not getting paid to act in analogous movies for other political factions in American politics, and right wing themes, undertones, or acknowledgements are not getting inserted into mainstream high budget action/adventure movies even to a token degree like left-wing ones do.
You are making the mistake of assuming that because the median Chinese citizen is ideologically opposed to the American left in a technical sense, Disney’s localizing movies for China means that Disney isn’t a captured institution. But in fact the American left cares very little about the beliefs and attitudes of the average Chinese person, as they compete in an almost entirely distinct political arena. So major movie companies being willing to sell movies there is not much evidence of anything.
More telling than Disney’s localizing for China at all is the fact that they refuse to make high budget, well marketed movies catering to (for example) the Christian right, even though such a niche has proven to be very profitable for independent filmmakers, and in fact ought to be easier for Disney to cater to as an American company.
What’s profitable for an independent filmmaker isn’t necessarily a market opportunity worth pursuing for Disney. Disney, Paramount, and the other major studios operate on an entirely different scale than independent filmmakers. Given the amount of corporate overhead that they have, a film that returns less than several hundred million dollars in profit, mostly due to merchandising and theme park tie-ins, in some ways, just isn’t worth it.
It’s not just the Christian right who are being neglected by this reality. Pretty much every film genre other than action/adventure and superhero has suffered. When was the last time we saw a major studio fund a small-to-medium budget comedy? Or romance? Drama still gets funding because those films win awards, but it’s unclear even how long that will last.
Okay, fine, maybe not Disney specifically, but Hollywood is perfectly capable of making explicitly political movies like Knives Out iff they are explicitly politically leftist. Chris Evans and Ana de Armas are not getting paid to act in analogous movies for other political factions in American politics, and right wing themes, undertones, or acknowledgements are not getting inserted into mainstream high budget action/adventure movies even to a token degree like left-wing ones do.