Abominable is a US-China film co-production set to succeed in both markets, and it is authentically Chinese
- The film is set in modern China, all the main characters are Chinese, and mainly Asian actors voice them. There’s a version for China with different jokes
- Abominable took US$20.9 million when it opened in US cinemas, and 20 million yuan when it opened in China. It could breakthrough industry has been waiting for
Animated film Abominable has been a surprise hit at the North American box office. The story of a young teenager and the yeti she finds living on the roof of her family’s apartment building, the film’s success – it took US$20.9 million at its domestic opening last week, and 20 million yuan (US$2.8 million) in its opening two days in China – has observers of Hollywood sitting up and taking note.
That’s not because it is animated – animated films have always done well in the United States market – but because the main characters are all Chinese, living in modern China, and voiced predominantly by Asian actors.
The film is a co-production between Chinese and American film studios: Shanghai-based Pearl Studio and DreamWorks Animation, owned by NBCUniversal, in America.
Co-productions between the US and China, the world’s first and second largest film markets, are increasingly common but have so far failed to garner the kind of cross-continental success that movie studios are hoping for.
Films like Crazy Rich Asians did very well in the West and among Asian-Americans, but failed to perform as well in China or resonate with Asians living in Asia. On the other hand, big budget co-productions like The Meg can be all but laughed out of cinemas in the US but still make millions if they catch on with Chinese audiences.
Abominable looks set to be a film that is truly appreciated and successful in both China and the United States. In part that success is due to the fact that it does not water down its “Chineseness” but embraces it through a slavish devotion to getting things right, and creating a world that will ring true to Chinese viewers.
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Writer-director Jill Culton took advantage of her partnership with Pearl Studio in China to research every last detail of what life in a Chinese metropolis is like: the city in Abominable isn’t named but will be familiar to anyone who has ever been there as Shanghai. The traffic is the same, the street noises are the same, the dishes served on the family table are the same, and even the rubber trash cans are the same as what you would find in Shanghai.
These choices are bolstered by Culton’s casting choices. Asian actors were tapped to voice Asian characters, a choice that may seem obvious but one which Hollywood has been woefully slow to make.
The main character, the young girl Yi is voiced by Asian-American actor Chloe Bennet, and she is joined in an ensemble cast including Albert Tsai, Tenzing Trainor, Tsai Chin, and Michelle Wong. In a change that will be a welcome relief to any scholars of Asian depiction in cinema, the villain of the film, an exotic-animal collector who covets the yeti, is voiced by white English comedic actor Eddie Izzard.
Another way that Pearl Studio and DreamVision are ensuring the film’s success in both countries is by producing two versions of the film.
Having a different voice-over cast for different language versions of a film is, of course, not groundbreaking. But Abominable goes further. The scripts themselves were changed.
The Mandarin release that premiered on October 1 had the jokes rewritten to make sense to a Chinese-speaking audience. And even the soundtrack was changed: a Coldplay song that is the centrepiece of the English version was re-recorded in Mandarin for the Chinese version.
Ideally, neither audience will feel they are watching a translation, but a film created with them in mind.
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Animated films have historically struggled in China, where they have been considered kids’ movies, but that is starting to change. There are signs that China is on the cusp of an animation boom, especially in light of the huge success of Nezha , an animated action adventure film released over the summer which grossed nearly US$700 million in China alone.
Abominable is the first film out of Pearl Studio, but already the company is betting big on the future success of films like it. The studio says it will start making one film a year, with a goal to raise that to two films a year in the near future.
