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Hollywood’s new money grows in a China grove

The boxing film, “Southpaw,” starring Jake Gyllenhaal pulled in a solid $16.5 million in its opening weekend…making back more than half of the estimated production costs for the Weinstein Company-created drama. That’s likely bringing smiles in an unlikely place-- China. The reason? Those costs were paid for by China’s

Dalian Wanda Group, led by the man believed to be that country’s richest person, Wang Jianlin.

Bloomberg says it’s apparently the first time a Hollywood film was totally paid for by a Chinese firm.

Yahoo’s Aaron Task isn’t surprised that American filmmakers might jump at this kind of partnership.

“China is the fastest-growing movie market in the world,” he notes. “And they only allow 34 foreign films in each year. So if you’re involved with a Chinese production company, you might think you have a better chance of getting your film in China than if you’re acting without a Chinese partner.”

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Task adds this method of doing things is a lot different from some of the underhanded tactics the Chinese have been accused of in the past.

“We’ve heard a lot about Chinese firms sometimes illegally, sometime surreptitiously trying to steal copyright and infringe on what other companies are doing,” he points out. “In this case they’re working out in the open, they’re working with Hollywood and they’re going to say, ‘Hmm, this is how you make movies, this is what you do in marketing, this is how you do production and the back end side of things.’ And Hollywood is saying, 'yeah, come on in, we’ll take your money and show you how to do it.'”

And Task thinks we’ll be seeing much more of these kinds of Chinese-Hollywood arrangements in the future.

“According to the Wall Street Journal there are four new startups that are headed by former studio chiefs in Hollywood that have (gotten) more than $600 million from China so far,” he explains. “Nothing talks more than money, so I absolutely expect more Chinese money and more Hollywood saying 'sure, we’ll take it.'”

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