10 Ways That Movies Will Change In The 2020s

For a while at the start of 2019 the biggest movie in the world wasn't any Hollywood blockbuster, it was Chinese sci-fi adventure The Wandering Earth, which took home a box office gross of around $700 million, almost entirely within its own country. For comparison, Avengers: Endgame, the biggest Hollywood movie ever, made roughly $600 million in China.

It is obvious, then, that the Asian market in general, and that of China specifically, represents a hugely profitable area, but also one that Hollywood studios risk losing out on as Asian productions become bigger and more ambitious and take up more of the box office than films from overseas.

The obvious response is for Hollywood studios to work in partnership with their Asian counterparts to make movies with talent from both sides of the Pacific, which appeal to both audiences.

Just look at 2018's The Meg. The giant shark flick was co-produced by Warner Bros. and China's Gravity Pictures and paired Jason Statham with Li Bingbing, a megastar in China. The movie did passably well Stateside, making back its $130 million budget, but was overshadowed by the simultaneous success of Crazy Rich Asians. Despite its Asian focus, the latter was made primarily by and for Asian-Americans, however, and so struggled to find much audience within Asia itself. The Chinese co-produced Meg, however, was a smash hit in Asia, taking its global takings way above $500 million.

The 2020s will likely see many more movies following The Meg's example by involving both stars and creative talent from Asia and America, as well as picking plots that appeal across both continents' language and cultural barriers, such as giant monsters and martial arts epics.

See how Disney are currently reworking Mulan, a film whose original didn't make any impact on the Chinese box office, into a $300 million action epic vehicle for big name Chinese star Liu Yifei if you want to watch this already in action.