“Top Gun: Maverick” shows Hollywood can survive without China’s film market

With multiple blockbuster films banned from China but still doing well despite the pandemic, Hollywood studios are learning to live without the mainland Chinese film market.

The uneasy relationship between Hollywood and China took a major turn in the past year, highlighted now by the success of Top Gun: Maverick, which crossed the $1 billion mark in ticket sales last weekend.

Like many Hollywood productions in recent years, part of the film’s $170 million budget had partial backing from a major Chinese investor, in this case, Tencent. However, the company pulled out due to reported concerns that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials would not appreciate its affiliation with a film framing the US military in a positive light.

Political tensions tied the film first surfaced in 2019, when the initial trailer for Top Gun: Maverick showed Tom Cruise’s character wearing a flight jacket without the flag patches of Japan and Taiwan, which were shown in the 1986 original, and instead had different graphics in their place.  

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