Hollywood looks east

Director Zhang Yimou presents the best picture award at the Beijing International Film Festival. Photo by Jiang Dong / China Daily

At a forum at the third Beijing Film Festival on April 20, Ganis suggested Transformers 4 may shoot some scenes in historic Chinese buildings, which is very difficult to win approval for.

Marvel chose DMG Entertainment to help them make Iron Man 3. DMG Entertainment is a 20-year-old company based in Beijing and run by Dan Mintz, an American producer who speaks fluent Chinese.

Insiders reveal DMG played a significant role in getting Wang Xueqi to join the cast and convincing the studio to make a special version of the film for the Chinese market.

Only two weeks after Iron Man 3's promotional event in Beijing on April 6, DreamWorks announced at the Beijing Film Festival it will work with the State-owned China Film Group to produce the adventure epic, Tibet Code.

China Film Group is the most powerful film production and distribution company in China, and it has the exclusive rights to import foreign films for theatrical release.

Jiang Wei, general manager of Edko (Beijing) Films Limited, which co-produced The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor with Universal Pictures in 2008, says genuine cooperation between Hollywood and the Chinese film industry is still a long way off.

"The current approaches work more like marketing strategies to win Chinese attention and hospitality," he says.

"There is no real in-depth cooperation, in which staff from both countries work together, like what the English and Australian filmmakers have been doing in Hollywood."

The Chinese film industry needs to grow for greater cooperation to be achieved, he says.

"When China's film industry grows as an equal partner and the box office becomes big enough, the Hollywood community will have to think of real stories involving Chinese culture and people who are real characters. Only then will real co-productions be possible," he says.