'Pixels' Sanitized To Please Chinese

(MENAFN- Arab Times) In a 2013 script for the movie "Pixels," intergalactic aliens blast a hole in one of China's national treasures - the Great Wall. That scene is gone from the final version of the sci-fi comedy, starring Adam Sandler and released by Sony Pictures Entertainment this week in the United States. The aliens strike iconic sites elsewhere, smashing the Taj Mahal in India, the Washington Monument and parts of Manhattan. Sony executives spared the Great Wall because they were anxious to get the movie approved for release in China, a review of internal Sony Pictures emails shows. It is just one of a series of changes aimed at stripping the movie of content that, Sony managers feared, Chinese authorities might have construed as casting their country in a negative light. Along with the Great Wall scene, out went a scene in which China was mentioned as a potential culprit behind an attack, as well as a reference to a "Communist-conspiracy brother" hacking a mail server - all to increase the chances of getting "Pixels" access to the world's second-biggest box office.

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"Even though breaking a hole on the Great Wall may not be a problem as long as it is part of a worldwide phenomenon, it is actually unnecessary because it will not benefit the China release at all. I would then, recommend not to do it," Li Chow, chief representative of Sony Pictures in China, wrote in a December 2013 email to senior Sony executives. Li's message is one of tens of thousands of confidential Sony emails and documents that were hacked and publicly released late last year. The US government blamed North Korea for the breach. In April, WikiLeaks published the trove of emails, memos and presentations from the Sony hack in an online searchable archive. "We are not going to comment on stolen emails or internal discussions about specific content decisions," said a spokesman for Sony Pictures, a unit of Tokyo-based Sony Corp.

"There are myriad factors that go into determining what is best for a film's release, and creating content that has wide global appeal without compromising creative integrity is top among them." Chinese government and film-industry officials didn't respond to requests for comment for this story. "Pixels" wasn't the only Sony movie in which the China content was carefully scrutinized. The emails reveal how studio executives discussed ways to make other productions, including the 2014 remake of "RoboCop," more palatable to Chinese authorities. In a 2013 email about "RoboCop," the senior vice-president at Sony Pictures Releasing International at the time, Steve Bruno, proposed relocating a multinational weapons conglomerate from China. His solution: Put it in a Southeast Asian country like Vietnam or Cambodia. Ultimately, that change wasn't made, a viewing of the movie shows. Bruno has since left Sony.

Deepening

The Sony emails provide a behind-thescenes picture of the extent to which one of the world's leading movie studios exercised self-censorship as its executives tried to anticipate how authorities in Beijing might react to their productions. The internal message traffic also illustrates the deepening dependence of Hollywood on audiences in China, where box office receipts jumped by almost a third last year to $4.8 billion, as revenues in the United States and Canada shrank. Other studios have made changes to movies in a bid to get them approved by Beijing, altering the version that is screened in China. A scene showing a Chinese doctor who helps the main character in "Iron Man 3," for example, was lengthened in the Chinese version and included popular Chinese actress Fan Bingbing, a comparison of the Chinese and international versions shows. Produced by Marvel Studios, "Iron Man 3" was the second top grossing movie in China in 2013. Marvel declined to comment. In the case of "Pixels," in which the aliens attack Earth in the form of popular video game characters, the Sony emails point to the creation of a single version for all audiences - a China-friendly one.

The logic behind Sony's thinking was explained by Steven O'Dell, president of Sony Pictures Releasing International, in a Sept 12, 2013 email about "RoboCop." "Changing the China elements to another country should be a relatively easy fix," O'Dell wrote. "There is only downside to leaving the film as it is. Recommendation is to change all versions as if we only change the China version, we set ourselves up for the press to call us out for this when bloggers invariably compare the versions and realize we changed the China setting just to pacify that market." Efforts by the US motion-picture industry to woo China come as the ruling Communist Party under President Xi Jinping is engaged in the biggest crackdown on civil society in more than two decades. About a dozen human rights lawyers were taken into police custody this month, and hundreds of dissidents have been detained since Xi took power in late 2012.

Flourish

As China rises, its efforts to contain civil liberties at home are radiating outward. The removal of scenes from "Pixels" thought to be offensive to Beijing shows how global audiences are effectively being subjected to standards set by China, whose government rejects the kinds of freedoms that have allowed Hollywood to flourish. "I think the studios have grown pretty savvy," said Peter Shiao, founder and CEO of Orb Media Group, an independent film studio focused on Hollywood-Chinese coproductions. "For a type of movie, particularly the global blockbusters, they are not going to go and make something that the Chinese would reject for social or political reasons. That is already a truism."