Many scientists can argue whether the new coronavirus was made at the Wuhan Institute of Virology or was the result of its citizens’ eating bat soup, but we can all unequivocally agree that it originated in China.
The rest of the world is quite literally in dire straits due to China. Make no mistake about it.
And here’s exactly why Hollywood refuses to blame China for the global pandemic.
The global pandemic caused by the Covid-19 coronavirus will have devastating effects that will take years to recover from when considering the consequences of the markets collapsing and the final death toll tally.
China is solely responsible for releasing Covid-19 onto the world. Whether it was genetically engineered in a laboratory or from eating unsafe virus-carrying vermin; it’s a moot point because the People’s Republic of China is at fault for either scenario.
Can we trust any of the data coming out of China right now?
Bloomberg News broke a story in late March that Chinese wireless cell phone carriers lost 21 million subscribers from January up until the damaging report was published. Could China have lost millions of people or maybe tens of millions to the coronavirus?
Is China too ashamed to admit it? Yes, that’s not just plausible, it’s a probability.
So why are American institutions cautious about condemning China for unleashing this coronavirus worldwide?
You probably already guessed by now the answer is – as it almost always is – money.
If you ever wonder why Hollywood studios pander to the Chinese in their movies and frequently oblige the Chinese censors, it’s because the country’s market has increased ten-fold in the last ten years.
Just ten years ago, the Chinese film market only brought in about $910 million annually and last year that number was $9 billion. Why? It’s all about the amount of movie screens in the communist country. In 2010, China only had 6,256 screens nationwide. Now, the country has over 60,000 and it’s still growing.
Do you see the correlation? Screens and revenue both increased by approximately 1000-percent in just ten years.
That’s precisely the reason why Hollywood fears any backlash from China. Hollywood has grown to rely on the Chinese market when recouping the production’s budget. In fact, some of these Chinese companies own stake in a lot of Hollywood.
For instance, China’s Wanda Group owns Legendary Pictures, which produced “Jurassic World” and Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight” trilogy, and also owns AMC Theatres – the largest American theater chain.
Last year, former Rep. John Culberson asked the Justice Department to look into Chinese investment in Hollywood, saying that these acquisitions “allow Chinese state-controlled companies a significant degree of control over the financing and content of American media that raises serious concerns about how this may be used for propaganda purposes.”
Hollywood’s forced to omit dialogue, situations, characters, scenes and even entire storylines from their movies to meet Chinese censor guidelines.
Is it really a surprise they’ve remained oddly quiet during this global pandemic?
Like China, Hollywood has no shame.
