Donald Trump’s Victory Casts Shadow on Hollywood’s China Business

Some financing deals face political pressure that could be amplified by Trump presidency.
By ERICH SCHWARTZEL

Donald Trump, holding a replica of his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, with his wife Melania and their son Barron in Los Angeles, Jan. 16, 2007. 

Donald Trump will be the first U.S. president since Ronald Reagan to have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, but he didn’t win many friends in show business during the campaign. 

Deep-pocketed celebrities and executives like “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” director J.J. Abrams and mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg repeatedly feted Hillary Clinton during the campaign; a Clinton presidency would have assured Hollywood had a friend in the White House.
Mr. Trump is a different story. 

He received barely any support from Hollywood figures during the campaign, and routinely picked fights with some.
Most relevant to Hollywood’s business is Mr. Trump’s rhetoric on China, which will likely become the nation’s No. 1 box office sometime during his administration. 

Any frayed relations with the country would ripple through Hollywood, which is already greenlighting movies based on their appeal among Chinese moviegoers. 

China’s regulators enforce mandates on movie distribution and marketing that Hollywood hopes to change; negotiating any variation of the terms is already a fraught dance for studios.
There is also a bigger bull’s-eye on the host of investments coming from China to U.S. production companies hungry for financing. 

Some of those deals, including Dalian Wanda Group Co.’s pending acquisition of Carmike Cinemas Inc., are already facing political pressure in Washington that could be amplified by Trump’s presidency, given the candidate’s anti-China rhetoric on the trail. 

Chinese businessmen like Alibaba’s Jack Ma could pull back entertainment deals if they risk angering the party by doing business in the U.S. 

Legislators in Washington have already decried the “soft power” potential that China could wield by completing such deals.
Hollywood will also be leaning on political power early next year, not long after Mr. Trump is inaugurated, to renegotiate China’s quota on the number of foreign films it lets into its theaters. 

The last negotiation, which raised the number of releases to 34 from 20, was led in 2012 by Vice President Joe Biden, in conversations with Xi Jinping, then China’s vice president and now its president. 

Xi has been consolidating power in recent months and could use Hollywood as a punching bag to prove his might and resist any expansion of the quota—a move that could cost studios billions of dollars in revenue.