• andallthat@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    The US being by far the biggest exporter of movies, the only way this makes sense is that Trump is not seeing enough ass-kissing (and bribes campaign donations) from the US movie industry, so he’s actively trying to damage them.

    Claim foreign movies are a threat, wait for other countries to retaliate against US movies, sit back and watch bribes sales of $TRUMP grow as the major studios seek his political favor.

    • ToastedRavioli@midwest.social
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      30 days ago

      I mean at least this is one of the situations where at its base a tariff makes sense in an industry protectionist way. Its not like putting insane tariffs on goods we dont even manufacture here whatsoever, which is just stupid.

      That said, a 100% tariff is just mind bogglingly stupid dick-swinging in this already hostile trade environment. It would make more sense if it was like 5%. Not something that will make the world boycott our media

      • Initiateofthevoid@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        30 days ago

        I mean at least this is one of the situations where at its base a tariff makes sense in an industry protectionist way

        Except for the fact that - under no circumstances - do you need tariffs to protect a wildly successful industry. That makes no sense because there’s nothing to protect against. It can literally only do harm.

        • The Chinese market is huge, yes, but increasingly turning away from Hollywood productions to homegrown ones. In 2025 for example 哪吒2 (Nézhā 2) broke scored over $2 billion at the box office, with a record-smashing $1.96 billion of that coming domestically. By way of comparison Captain America 4 only managed $14.4 million so far, a dramatic drop from 2016’s Captain America 3 returns of $180 million in 2016.

          For reference, even CA3’s $180 million is an order of magnitude smaller than Nezha 2. CA4’s is two orders of magnitude smaller.

          Now this is still true: China’s theatre-going audience, estimated at over half a billion people, is larger than the entire population of the USA. It’s still a hugely important market. But, for example, in 2024 the Chinese box office was estimated at ~6 billion dollars total: and 80% of that went to domestic films. The best-performing foreign film of 2024 (Dune 2) only made $48 million, ranking it about 8th. 7th was 维和防暴队 (Wéihé Fángbàoduì/Formed Police Unit) and it made over $120 million.

          I’m pretty sure that the Chinese market for Hollywood films is vanishing.