By Travis Johnson
The Chinese television series Old Boy, partially shot in Sydney and Goulburn, has proven to be a smash in its native land. Debuting on Sunday, March 4, in China on Hunan Television in the number one spot, the series, which follows a playboy commercial pilot (Ye Liu) whose life is turned upside down by the appearance of a teen son he never knew existed, chalked up 230 million views for its first eight episodes on online platforms, not taking into account its number in time slot broadcast TV ratings.
Sydney Film Production Co. provided production services and facilitated the series’ Australian shoot. It’s one of a number of Australian-Chinese co-productions the company has on its books, and part of the firm’s stated remit of creating and fostering screen content for both Australian and Chinese audiences.
For some time now the received wisdom has been that Chinese-Australian co-productions will comprise a large part of the Australian screen sector in the not-too-distant future, but we’ve been waiting for that future to arrive for some time now. The people at Sydney Film, however, are committed to making it happen – in April 2017 the company announced a slate of 14 co-productions. In October of the same year the company hired industry veteran Mark Lazarus (The Loved Ones, Jungle, Guardians of the Tomb) as their head of production and announced the sci-fi adaptation The Paper Menagerie, based on the Hugo, the Nebula, and World Fantasy Award-winning short story by Ken Liu (which you can read here), as their next project.
Speaking to FilmInk, Lazarus half-jokingly attributes the production house’s impressive upcoming roster to a combination of “…blind optimism and a connection of various experiences and resources and also, I actually had a wonderful experience with my Chinese partners on Guardians of the Tomb.
“I have a few special insights maybe from being a Western producer working with Chinese producers and Chinese resources,” he continues. “And just like any relationship you get out of it what you put in.”
China’s huge population and economic strength means that their cultural influence is being felt in the West more and more, especially in Australia, a Western colonial nation located so close, globally speaking, to China itself. However, while Chinese box office has measurable effects on Western production practices – for example, we’re about to get a Pacific Rim sequel because China turned out for a film coolly received in the US – the tide does not flow back as strongly. Established fans of Asian cinema aside, Anglophone audiences do not, at this point, respond to Mandarin-language cinema. Surely that must be a concern?
In answer, Lazarus recalls being on a panel at UCLA two years ago at the US-China Film Summit in Los Angeles, and fielding the same question. “Everybody was saying that you can’t do it,” he remembers. “I said, I have to challenge you guys. I think it can be done. The fact that The Fast and the Furious is a monster hit in China. Even Hacksaw Ridge was a terrific success in China. We know that we have common ground already.”
It will be one film, one monster hit, that marks the change, Lazarus says, echoing on a larger scale the wuxia boom that followed 2000’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
“You’ve got to keep on track for trends,” he enthuses. “And one of the things that everyone is waiting for is the first super cool hard sci-fi movie to come out of China. Now sci-fi is a genre we know the Chinese – they just haven’t been able to do it and been able to capture an international audience. Hard sci-fi is absolutely an area we’re looking at material from.”
But if not that, then perhaps it’ll be The Paper Menagerie, which centers on Jack, a Chinese-American boy who learns about his late mother’s past through the origami animals she brought to life for him as a child, and a project Lazarus firmly believes transcends cultural borders. “That story makes Americans and Australians and Chinese people cry. You do need to pick the right material to begin with – not every movie will satisfy everybody. But that one property by itself – that is a great illustration of what we can do.”
