Donnie Yen Thinks He Knows Why ‘Star Wars’ Does So Poorly In China

There’s no denying it, “Star Wars,” as a franchise, just doesn’t work very well in China. As the country continues to become one of the biggest film markets all over the world, with films like “Avengers: Infinity War” earning over $350 million in China alone, one of the most glaring statistics is the poor showing for all of the ‘Star Wars’ films.

And Donnie Yen, who starred in the massively popular, “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” and is a legend in China, thinks he knows why the franchise struggles so much. In an interview with JoBlo, he’s asked to explain just why the galaxy far, far away doesn’t seem to resonate with Chinese film fans.

The ‘Rogue One’ star explained: “Yeah, and that’s unfortunate. ‘Star Wars’ – Chinese audiences didn’t grow up with ‘Star Wars’ culture so unfortunately, it didn’t work. Marvel is a lot easier to understand. ‘Star Wars,’ there’s a whole universe out there. Marvel, from the costumes to the music, to the idols, to the stars, it’s much easier to close the gap between the film itself and the audience.”

You’re probably thinking, “Just how badly does ‘Star Wars’ do in China?” Well, in a word, terrible.

The biggest “Star Wars” franchise film in China is easily ‘The Force Awakens.’ That film, which marked the first time that Disney and Lucasfilm really pushed the franchise in the country only earned $124 million. Now, that total doesn’t seem like a horrible number at all, right? Well, consider ‘The Force Awakens’ did $111 million in Germany and $163 million in the U.K., with both countries being far, far smaller than China, and you can really put that $124 million in perspective.

And since ‘The Force Awakens,’ the results have trended even worse. The aforementioned ‘Rogue One,’ which to be fair is not part of the main Skywalker Saga, was released a year later and only earned $69.5 million in China. A year later, the divisive ‘The Last Jedi,’ which should have come close to ‘The Force Awakens,’ only earned $42.6 million in the Middle Kingdom. And finally, and by far the worst of all, “Solo: A Star Wars Story,” which underperformed everywhere (and is a whole other can of worms to unpack another day), pulled in an abysmal $16.5 million.

As you can see, the numbers for “Star Wars” films in China are going down, and fast. Disney is taking note, as well. Back in May, after ‘Solo’s’ horrible debut, distribution boss Dave Hollis brought up the lackluster international showing for the film, and the series as a whole.

“We have a lot of work to do in trying to understand this,” said Hollis. “We are all over it and will spend a lot of time digging into why things happened the way they did in various markets. We have a year and a half before ‘Episode IX’ comes out.”

Will Disney figure it out by December 2019? Or is China just never going to embrace “Star Wars?” These are questions we won’t know the answer to until we get “Star Wars: Episode IX.” But make no mistake, all eyes will be on China.