Poor ‘Mulan’ Debut Highlights The Problem With Hollywood’s Pursuit Of Chinese Box Office

Mulan may have been a slam dunk in 2015, when it was first green-lit, but the Chinese marketplace has shifted toward home-grown blockbusters and DC/Marvel superhero movies.

Walt Disney’s DIS Mulan opened yesterday with an underwhelming $7.96 million (counting previews). At this rate, we’re probably looking at (at best) a $24 million debut and $52 million total, which frankly is on par with Aladdin from last year. The film has been available in pirated copies for the last week, thanks to Disney’s PVOD release last Friday, and word of mouth has been mediocre at best. While piracy and coronavirus-related challenges played a role, the notion of Mulan scoring big in China was always a coin toss. Niki Caro’s $200 million Mulan came off as a movie explicitly targeted at Chinese moviegoers but better suited to the time in which it was greenlit (five years ago) than the moment of its release. By 2020, a movie like Mulan was no longer a big deal.  

Walt Disney announced their live-action Mulan movie back in early 2015. They were celebrating the over-performance of Angelina Jolie’s Maleficent, a troubled and rocky production that had survived mixed reviews to earn a towering $242 million domestic and $758 million worldwide cume on a $180 million budget. It was just the third of their recent “live action version of a toon” movies, alongside the ridiculously over-performing Alice in Wonderland ($1.025 billion in 2010) and Oz: The Great and Powerful ($492 million in 2013). Just one year prior, Paramount’s PGRE Transformers: Age of Extinction had grossed $320 million in China, a massive upswing from the $165 million gross of Transformers: Dark of the Moon three years prior, while Chris Nolan’s Interstellar had just earned $122 million. It made complete sense at the time.

Sans the coronavirus pandemic, Niki Caro’s $200 million-budgeted Mulan likely still would have been a solid worldwide hit. The initial domestic debut, scheduled for March 27, was tracking for an $80-$90 million Fri-Sun weekend while the film’s LA premiere was generating solid buzz. With the important caveat that Walt Disney was expecting Mulan to be a hit everywhere and not just China, the biggest variable that changed between 2015 and 2020 was its reception in China. John Woo’s jaw-droppingly huge, two-part, five-hour Red Cliff had earned $250 million worldwide in 2009, which was the same year Avatar earned $200 million in China alone. By late 2014, Gone with the Bullets and The Monkey King were suggesting the possibility of Chinese movies that could approximate the size (and success) of a Hollywood blockbuster.

Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons ($197 million out of $215 million from China) showed that Chinese movies, costing less than Hollywood variations, could earn blockbuster totals in China alone. The kid-friendly fantasy Monster Hunt would earn $385 million in China in 2015 while Stephen Chow’s The Mermaid would kick off 2016 by earning $550 million. The nationalistic action spectacular Wolf Warrior II (think Rambo: First Blood part II meets Tears of the Sun) earned $854 million in China alone in the summer of 2017. It remains the third-biggest single-territory gross for any movie behind Avengers: Endgame ($858 million domestic) and The Force Awakens ($937 million domestic). In 2019, The Wandering Earth (a big-budget Armageddon-type sci-fi spectacular) would earn $692 million in China while the animated Ne Zha would earn $724 million.

Concurrently, while Chinese audiences were still showing up for Hollywood imports, their tastes were changing. Since they didn’t have to depend on Hollywood for big-screen spectacle, they were less inclined to care about generic Hollywood blockbusters that had bits and pieces tailor-made for China. There did seem to be a preference for unapologetic pulp fantasy (The Meg, Rampage) and distinctly foreign movies (Dangal, Green Book) that weren’t necessarily tailor-made for China. Even The Great Wall, a Matt Damon/Pedro Pascal-starring attempt to appeal to America and China, featured giant monsters and over-the-top action fantasy sequences. Zhang Yimou’s Universal/Legendary period-piece adventure was a disappointment. Its $155 million Chinese gross wasn’t enough to compensate for poor showings worldwide, resulting in a $335 million global cume on a $150 million budget in 2015/2016.

Ditto Universal and Legendary’s video game flick Warcraft, was more frontloaded in China ($90 million in the first 48 hours) than in North America and was still a miss at $433 million (including just $47 million domestic) on a $165 million budget. In terms of pre-release interest translating to poor word-of-mouth and audience indifference, it was their Batman v Superman. Just putting a Chinese character or Chinese location in an otherwise generic blockbuster wasn’t going to do it if it wasn’t a movie Chinese audiences actually wanted to see. Transformers was a known and liked property in China, and Michael Bay’s increasingly gonzo-bananas sequels, which stood out as bigger in size, scale and weirdness compared to the majority of blockbusters. It wasn’t just any old Hollywood franchise.

Meanwhile, “family above all else” fantasy melodramas like Furious 7 ($392 million in 2015), Coco ($188 million in 2017) and Interstellar ($122 million) were huge in China, and the unapologetically American likes of Zootopia ($235 million in 2016) and Captain America: Civil War ($190 million in 2016) debunked the notion that China couldn’t handle complex plots, local humor or dialogue-driven actioners. The relative indifference to Star Wars and Star Trek showed that they wouldn’t embrace a franchise just because it was popular in America. Meanwhile, two big changes were taking place in China just in the last two years that would turn Mulan from a surefire hit to an underdog. We started seeing more local Chinese blockbusters, and Hollywood’s DC/Marvel superhero movies began to soar in comparative popularity.

When Detective Chinatown 2 earns $575 million and The Eight Hundred grosses $370 million (and counting), you’re not as dependent on Hollywood biggies. Meanwhile, up until late 2018, no non-Avengers superhero flick had earned more than the over/under $122 million likes of Iron Man 3, X-Men: Apocalypse and Ant-Man and the Wasp. Non-superhero tentpoles like Kong: Skull Island, Rampage, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, War for the Planet of the Apes, xXx: Return of Xander Cage and Resident Evil: The Final Chapter were racking up $155-$170 million cumes. But then Sony’s offbeat Venom earned $262 million and Warner Bros.’ Aquaman nabbed $298 million. While Captain Marvel earned $154 million in 2019, Detective Pikachu ($93 million), Alita: Battle Angel ($133 million) and Godzilla: King of the Monsters ($135 million) comparatively struggled.

Avengers: Endgame grossed $620 million, +71% from Avengers: Infinity War ($359 million) in 2018 while Spider-Man: Far from Home earned $200 million compared to Homecoming’s $116 million gross in 2017. Save for Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw ($200 million), no Hollywood non-superhero movie has topped $136 million since Bumblebee ($171 million) in early 2019. Mulan wasn’t a DC/Marvel superhero flick. It’s an American blockbuster aimed at China amid a slew of actual Chinese biggies. It was respectful to the point of parody, so afraid of offending that it almost forgets to entertain. It was stereotypically engineered to score in China even as acclaimed Hollywood features with Asian casts (Crazy Rich Asians, The Farewell, Abominable, etc.) were treated as no big deal. As feared, to actual Chinese moviegoers, Mulan is... Tuesday.