Jackie Chan appears in a Hong Kong flick, but he is set to become China’s highest paid actor. With the recent modernization of China, there have been more and more Chinese films being made. These new films naturally require more actors.
The rise of these actors has been rapid, but still not as rapid as some would like. The blog below illustrates the rise of Chinese actors, but bemoans the fact that they don’t receive the same treatment as their American counterparts yet.
Jackie Chan is set to become China’s highest paid actor and will receive $50 million for his next film – more than Tom Cruise, Johnny Depp and Leonardo DiCaprio.
In a country now obsessed with the glamour of Hollywood, it seems China’s own homegrown stars are beginning to command the same pay packets as their American counterparts.
While Chan has been an international superstar since the 1980s, other Chinese actors are beginning to receive large payouts thanks to the country’s growing movie industry.
The popularity of martial arts films in particular is driving this pay rise. One of the most popular Chinese films of all time was Fearless (2006) starring Jet Li. It took over $100 million in its first week at the box office in China.
The Hong Kong superstar Jackie Chan, who is building a career in Hollywood with the Rush Hour series, is set to become China’s highest paid actor after signing a deal to appear in three films for mainland audiences.
Chan has been courted by Chinese film-makers since his breakthrough in Hollywood but has refused to work on the mainland because he fears he will lose control over his movies. But the Hong Kong director Stanley Tong brokered a deal that allows Chan full artistic freedom and means he will be paid more than $10m for each of the films he agrees to make.
Chan will start work on his first mainland movie, New Police Story, in May. He may also star in an adaptation of Journey to the West, an epic novel about a Buddhist monk’s travels across China to India, which is being made by Zhang Yimou, the Oscar-nominated director of Raise the Red Lantern.
CHINA’S most famous film star, Jackie Chan, is set to become China’s richest actor with a new contract that will see his pay rise to $40 million per movie.
Chan has signed a three-film deal with the Shanghai Film Group, in which he will also be an investor and producer. The first film will be a remake of Chan’s 1996 hit “First Strike”, a Hong Kong action movie about a Hong Kong cop who saves nuclear secrets from the Chinese intelligence service.
The other two films will be original works by Chan, one of which will be directed by Stephen Chow, according to the group’s chairman, Ren Zhonglun.
The Shanghai Film Group has already started work on producing a remake of the first film and is looking for investors for the other projects in the co-operation agreement.
Jackie Chan has set his sights on becoming the highest paid actor in China after production company Talent International signed him to a 3-year deal that is expected to net him 100 million yuan (US$16 million) in return for starring in six films.
The Hong Kong action star, who turns 61 next month, said he was now focused on the Chinese mainland market after enjoying success in the US and Europe.
The Asia Pacific region is now home to seven of the world’s 17 billionaires under 40, according to Forbes’ annual list of the world’s richest people published this week. The list includes Wang Sicong, son of real estate developer Wang Jianlin, who owns China’s biggest commercial property developer by market value, Dalian Wanda Group.
Wang Sicong, 28, took over China’s top spot from Lei Jun, founder of smartphone maker Xiaomi Inc., who is worth US$9 billion and ranked 21st on the global list.
Excerpts from the blog:
“He has long been famous in Hong Kong and throughout Asia, but only now is Jackie Chan becoming known to American audiences. In The Tuxedo he plays a cab driver who takes over the role of a suave secret agent (Jason Isaacs) when the latter is injured.”
The film was written by first-time screenwriter Michael J. Wilson, who said that he wrote the script with Chan in mind for the lead role.
“I’ve always been a big fan of Jackie Chan,” Wilson told reporters during a roundtable interview in San Francisco earlier this week. “I loved his movies and thought it was about time we had a really great Jackie Chan movie in America.”
Chinese actors have been the highest paid actors in the world, with Jackie Chan earning $50 million a year. This is not because Chinese movies make more money than Hollywood movies. Most Chinese movies don’t make much money at all.
But that doesn’t stop movie producers from spending as much on a movie as they possibly can. In most industries, when you want to produce something, you look at how much it costs to get your raw materials and labor, you look at what people are willing to pay for it, and you aim to make a profit in the middle. If you’re making a movie in Hollywood, or Bollywood, or Korea, that’s basically how it works: if you want to make a movie costing $10 million dollars and expect to sell tickets for $20 million, you can raise the money.
But in China things work differently. China has lots of rich people who want to be even richer by investing in real estate or entertainment or whatever else seems likely to be hot in the future. And even though most Chinese movies lose money now, there are enough successes that people think some of them will probably do well in the future. So if you tell a rich person you want to make a movie costing $10 million dollars, he’ll give it
