Variety published an exclusive interview with Shawn Yue, the executive producer of Detective Chinatown 3, the #1 global box office performer of the past 12 months, having grossed over $685M in two months since its January release. Yue points out that the infrastructure in the US for producing big-budget films is more mature and cost-effective than it is in China or anywhere else in the world.
Yue concludes that any film with a budget of over $20M can be produced less expensively in the US, UK, or other Western film production centres. Still, the politics of China outsourcing its film production to the US are fraught with complications in both countries. Despite this challenge, economics make it inevitable that this outsourcing of film production will occur, in the same way that the outsourcing of manufacturing in the opposite direction has taken place. Yue stated that Detective Chinatown 4 production would “definitely have to go to London.”
