This book examines the contemporary relationship between Hollywood and China as case studies that help to define a new era in Hollywood film industry, style, and economics, which is termed the ‘post‑postclassical’ period.
Centred around a case study of Legendary Entertainment, the analysis shows how the studio adopted and adapted its global strategies in order to gain access to and favour within the Chinese film market, and how issues of censorship and financial performance affected the choices they made. Demonstrating Legendary’s identity as a ‘post‑postclassical’ studio and examining how this plays into its China‑strategy, this book explores how this particular case and the necessary analysis of wider political economic relations offer a periodisation of the contemporary Hollywood‑China relationship.
This book will interest students and scholars of media and film studies, as well as academics whose research interests include global cinema, Hollywood, Chinese cinema, transnational cinema, and film industry studies.
Introduction
- Global Hollywood in the Post-postclassical Era: Soft Power, Culture, and Global Relations
- Becoming Legendary: Selling the Thomas Tull Mythology
- Legendary Goes East: 'China-focus' and 'China-strategy' in Post-postclassical Hollywood
- Welcome to Chinawood? Navigating the Co-production Process in The Great Wall (2016)
- Post-postclassical Hollywood and the 'Global Audience': The Marketing, Reception, and Lessons of The Great Wall (2016)
- China and Hollywood Redux: Wanda’s Acquisition of Legendary and the Fall Back of Hollywood-China Relations
Conclusion
Biography
Lara Herring is a lecturer in the School of Arts and Media at the University of Salford in the UK. Coming from a film production background, Lara’s research is largely centred around film industry analysis, framed by cinematic geopolitics and the role of cinema in communicating national identity.
