Hollywood's shocking new ally

Hollywood is working more and more closely with a new ally, and American movie-ticket buyers might not be pleased to find out who that is.

That's the conclusion of a report from the Family Research Council, which reveals that in "today's Hollywood, there's one director – and that's China."

"It's the biggest partnership no one knows about, and according to some experts, the most dangerous. The majority of Americans probably have no idea when they buy a ticket to the latest blockbuster that the film they're about to see was either partially financed by China or altered because of it. In the last several years, there hasn't been a more powerful influence over Hollywood than the communist regime – and with Chinese ticket sales set to overtake the U.S., the situation is only going to get worse," the FRC reported.

"There's a sinister side to all of this, which is that the more Hollywood relies on China's market to make movies, the more those movies are going to cater to the country's demands. The Heritage Foundation's Mike Gonzalez has been tracking the major revolution in filmmaking because of the Chinese market and thinks more Americans need to be paying attention," FRC reported.

"Hollywood does all kinds of things to make sure they have a slice of the Chinese pie," he recently explained. "And they're quite open about it. They don't hide it. They're quite happy to submit to the censorship of the Chinese Communist Party."

It's not complicated, he said.

"In order for the U.S. film to crack the Chinese market, certain themes cannot be portrayed, certain products must be taken out, and certain speech must be limited," he said.

Filmmakers actually have been flying over Chinese censors to watch filming, and recommend changes in scripts and more, he reported.

"Others try to save themselves the time and money of those overhauls by just co-producing their movies with the Chinese from the start – including, in 2018, some of the biggest box office successes: 'Mission Impossible: Fallout,' 'Venom,' 'The MEG,' and 'Pacific Rim: Uprising,'" the report said.

The FRC report explained that the end result is that moviemakers are complicit in censorship of American products when it meets the needs of the Communist Party regime in China.

Said Heritage's Gonzalez: "How come there's never been a movie about the Tiananmen Square massacre? That was drama there. There were students who were crushed by soldiers. There was blood, there was death, there was scheming. And yet Hollywood has never made a movie about Tiananmen. Why? Because any studio who makes a movie about Tiananmen knows that will be shut out forever from the Chinese box office market."

The FRC report contrasted the movement to appease a hostile foreign government to Hollywood's current rants against states, like Georgia, that adopt pro-life laws.

"This is an industry in partnership with the Chinese government, a notoriously brutal regime, who's turning around and telling places like Georgia: We're not doing business with you because you passed pro-life laws," the report said.

"Hollywood has no problem climbing down from its moral high horse to sell tickets in China – where people are being viciously tortured and killed – but decides it can't possibly ally itself with states that protect their own people," the report added.