A Hollywood executive who helped make American movies appeal to Chinese audiences is now saying he thinks the film industry has become too reliant on appealing to the country.
Chris Fenton, a longtime executive who worked on massive films like Marvel’s Iron Man 3, Looper and the 2015 remake of Point Break, says he helped movies have a market in China, but it came at a cost.
“We were really at the trailblazing, pivotal spot in terms of collaborating with that superpower and bringing in a product and service which had never been in that market before in any sort of serious monetizable way,” Fenton, 55, told Fox News Digital.
He explained that what began as a collaboration became something else over time.
“We placated them both by allowing their domestic industry to learn and progress as quickly as possible to become best in class like Hollywood,” he alleged. “We censored our content, and we reprogrammed our content to fit the narrative that Beijing directed in order to have access to that market.”
He used the 2012 science fiction film Looper as an example, saying that parts of the original script that were supposed to take place in France were changed to take place in China to feel more relatable to that audience.
He went on to claim that the American film industry didn’t enjoy the same spike in audience engagement that the Chinese market saw.
“So, not only have we spread Beijing’s messaging around the world … but we also lost the market in the process,” he explained.
Fenton tried to mitigate this problem with his new movie, Bad Counselors, produced entirely in the United States with an all-American cast and crew.
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