From “Red Obsessions,” a feature article by Lars Olav-Beier in Spiegel about Asia trying to supplant Hollywood as the global Dream Factory:

“Not just China, but also South Korea and Russia have become more important in the film business in recent years. The Russian market grew by almost 20 percent in 2012, with a film like Ice Age 4 earning $50 million there, or more than half of its budget.

‘We can no longer risk making an expensive film with a star who isn’t popular in Asia,’ says Hollywood producer Jerry Bruckheimer (Pirates of the Caribbean). While American films earned up to two-thirds of their revenues in North America in the 1980s, today it averages only about one third.

Hollywood has been beset by fears of a sellout, ever since Indian investment firm Reliance acquired the majority of the DreamWorks film studio and a Chinese company bought the second-largest movie theater chain in the United States. Finally, in mid-January the Chinese electronics company TLC bought the naming rights to Grauman’s Chinese Theater in the heart of Hollywood, one of the most famous movie theaters in the United States. It seems only a matter of time before the Chinese buy their first Hollywood studio.

It’s happened once before, now more than 20 years ago, that Asians, specifically Japanese companies like Sony, acquired a number of studios. ‘China wants something different from Hollywood than what Japan wanted at the time,’ says American industry expert Thomas Plate. ‘It isn’t as much about money as it is about know-how.’

Of course, money isn’t the only issue for Hollywood, either. America sees cinema as its very own art form, tailor-made for telling the world American stories and celebrating American values. ‘We’ll still be making movies about American football in the future,’ says Bruckheimer, ‘but with much smaller budgets. That’s because it’s almost exclusively American viewers who are interested in football.’ Bruckheimer exhorts his screenwriters to think internationally and write roles for Asian stars into films.”