Interesting article in Variety (Asia) about foreign co-productions, but after reading through the whole thing, which covered China, India, Latin America, and other jurisdictions, I realized that there was something important missing in the discussion: legal regulatory issues.

Granted, this particular article was more about cultural/business issues than anything else, but the main thrust was to analyze the presence of the big Hollywood studios in local projects overseas. In that context, leaving out FDI and other government restrictions, at least with respect to China, seems like a big omission.

Remember that things were supposed to be quite different in the film industry here by now. Production JVs for film and television were not only expected to become common, but some folks even thought that by now we might see 100 foreign ownership (WFOEs). Alas, that hasn't happened yet.

When you take the FDI restrictions and add the usual censorship and other fun procedures brought to us by our friends at SARFT, well, there are certainly more than the usual business reasons keeping many studios from directly investing heavily in the biz over here, despite there having been several noteworthy successes from one-off co-productions.

As usual, this makes China one of the most "interesting" jurisdictions to watch as the studios try to figure out how to succeed in overseas markets. With the current regulatory regime over here, which is not expected to change dramatically anytime soon (WTO lawsuits notwithstanding), the challenges will certainly not be limited to understanding local industry practices.