In 1993, Mintz founded DMG — short for Dynamic Media Group — with Wu Bing, a former national gymnastics champion, and analyst Peter Xiao to capitalize on the country’s boom in advertising. “I realized that if I stayed here for five years, I would probably see 30 years of growth and change,” he says. The 49-year-old Mintz explains that DMG is the ideal partner for Hollywood, not least because of its cozy ties to regulators who can make or break projects.PHOTOS: Johnny Depp at 50: The Superstar’s Life and Career in PicturesMintz first landed in Beijing in 1989 to scout a TV commercial and says he felt an immediate connection to the way the country straddles its ancient past and modern development. Operating as both a production and distribution entity, DMG. Founded in 1994 by Dan Mintz, the company portfolio has grown to include diverse holdings across film, television, comic book publishing, gaming, and location-based entertainment.
Dan Mintz Dmg Entertainment Crack The ChineseIf you want to come to China and shoot, we can help you out.” And people would look at me like I was insane. We’ve got amazing locations. And say: “Hey, this is a fast-growing market. He met with THR in his Beijing office to talk about what Hollywood can do to crack the Chinese market.What has been the biggest change in how Hollywood deals with China during the 20 years you’ve been here?In the early years, sometimes I would come back to L.A. The self-described “busy single guy on the go” keeps homes in Beijing, Shanghai, New York and Los Angeles and says he doesn’t book meetings more than a couple of weeks in advance because he has no idea where he will be.The other trigger was economic. They weren’t going to start the culture-industry push until that went off well. It was China’s big coming-out party to the world, and as far as the government was concerned, there were two times: before the Olympics and after the Olympics. The political trigger was the 2008 Beijing Olympics. How did you make the transition?Two triggers — one political, one economic. Well, China sells itself now.Q&A: ‘Iron Man 3’ Producer Dan Mintz Reveals China Co-Production Status, Offers Advice to HollywoodDMG began in TV commercials and marketing then moved into film.![]() And we were shooting the biggest, most expensive spots for major brands: Volkswagen, the NBA and others. We were shooting so many TV commercials our crews were shooting 200 days a year. How did you land that project?It was our first feature, but we were already very tapped in to the local market. Once that happened, we knew the market would really take off.Your first film, 2009’s The Founding of a Republic , was commissioned by the government to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China. There were three factors we waited for: access to screens, relevant content that people wanted to see and the third thing — which was really key from our consumer research — the social habit among ordinary Chinese people of going to the movies. So we look at the problem from the macro level to figure out what we need to do so that all our partners — U.S. We don’t want to just be a location and a place for them to come to project their own culture.” They want Chinese culture to spread around the world so that they are known and have influence. A lot of people in Hollywood are very focused on ticking the bare-minimum number of boxes to get into the China market, but what you need to understand is that all of the specific requirements that are set up for co-productions, for example, are there because someone on top said: “We want to be part of these films. Every government is out of touch, right? That’s just standard.What did you learn from that experience about working with the Chinese government?For effective U.S.-China collaborations, everyone needs to understand one another’s agendas — to build trust and deliver value for both sides. The consumer insights we had built up over the years were pretty impressive and especially useful for a government. Say you get one movie in, and maybe it meets the bare-minimum requirements somehow or you worked some sneaky one-off deal, but it obviously didn’t fulfill the spirit of what they were looking for — and there are lots of past examples of this. Hollywood often seems to be looking for the loophole or the shortcut, but there are no loopholes here. If you can genuinely solve that macro-level policy problem, your other problems go away. It can’t just be, “This guy’s got special connections,” because maybe he won’t next time.Would the U.S. When you look at people’s track records and what they’ve achieved, you need to be able to see that they follow international best practices, have accountability and know the regulatory environment in both markets. Another thing is to be rigorous in selecting your partners. Best antivirus and malware software for macJust to get it to that point — figuring out what would add value from a story perspective — was quite a journey. For some films, the studios are in an even worse position now.Did Iron Man 3 showcase China as much as you would have liked?I think it was an amazing first step. But then there were the scheduling issues — movies opening against each other or opening late — and people had trouble getting paid. When China opened the market up to 34 Hollywood imports in 2012, everyone thought everything was all good. 57 billion during the first nine months of the year — up 94 percent. These are the elements we’re interested in, not dragons or red lanterns.The big China box-office story of 2013 is the sudden surge of local movies, which grossed $1. And that’s the kind of thing we’re looking for — where it’s not forced, it just works better because there’s a little added value there. It’s not that another country wouldn’t have worked it’s just that China worked better. But the fact that there are some Chinese elements in there at all, in the Marvel universe, is an amazing first step.STORY: China’s DMG to Shoot CCTV Drama in SeattleWhat will DMG bring to Transcendence and Point Break ? Will there be Chinese elements?There’s a line in Looper where Joseph Gordon-Levitt is deciding what city to restart his life in, and Jeff Daniels‘ character, who’s from the future, tells him, “Trust me: Go to China.” That’s actually the line during testing that got the biggest laughs.
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