While the stories out of Hollywood tend to focus on the trivial, like the latest inane political comment made by a virtue-signaling celebrity, there is a much more serious and wide-reaching story taking place in Tinseltown: China is taking over the film industry.
Wolverine Entertainment has launched a new Kickstarter project to fund a film exposing China’s coup of Hollywood. The video summary of the project shows that the Chinese Dalian Wanda Group purchased AMC Entertainment in 2012, and just last year Dalian Wanda added Legendary Entertainment and Dick Clark Productions to their conglomerate. AMC Entertainment also became the biggest theater chain on the planet with its purchase of Carmike Cinemas.
On Thursday, it was announced that DWG would be investing $1 billion into Paramount. Earlier in 2016, the conglomerate announced that it would be offering a 40 percent subsidy to entice movie productions to be filmed in China and has partnered with companies like Sony to promote various films.
The company is owned by Wang Jianlin, who served in the China’s People Liberation Army and served as a district bureaucrat appointed by the Chinese government prior to founding Dalian Wanda and becoming the wealthiest man in China.
In other words, through the Dalian Wanda Group, China is taking over Hollywood. They’re already expected to leapfrog the United States and became the largest movie market in the world this year.
The Wolverine project points out that China’s influence can already be seen in movies. For example, the Chinese government aided the protagonists in Transformers: Age of Extinction.
The truly insidious thing about China taking over Hollywood is that it gives its communist government the platform to influence the American culture that is already susceptible to socialism given the affinity millennials have for it , as demonstrated by the success of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) in the primaries.
A source close to the project told the Daily Wire that there is a way for the Trump administration to end China’s Hollywood activities rather quickly. The 1948 U.S. v. Paramount Pictures, Inc. Supreme Court case determined that under the Sherman Antitrust Act, no one can legally own studios and theaters at the same time. Dalian Wanda owns both. If Attorney General Jeff Sessions were to launch an investigation into the matter, China’s power grab in Hollywood could end rapidly.
The Kickstarter project then aims to ensure that people are aware of China’s activities to spur action. It can be seen here.
Follow Aaron Bandler on Twitter @bandlersbanter.