Jackie chan film11/14/2022 The response to the latter development has seen Cena lambasted in both the West and the East, with it being unclear if Chinese moviegoers will now seek out an action film starring John Cena, even one that pairs him up with Jackie Chan. This prompted a backlash from China and a prompt apology from Cena. In May 2021, while promoting F9, Cena referred to Taiwan as a country, which is heavily discouraged in Chinese media. The whole project sounds even riskier to such individuals in the wake of Cena’s recent PR snafu. Thus, an action film where John Cena is on equal footing with Jackie Chan sounds like a marketing risk for Chinese distributors in 2021. While the occasional Avengers: Endgame can still dominate the Chinese box office, the likes of Wolf Warriors II and Hi, Mom are now the de facto titles that Chinese moviegoers rush out for. In the last few years, and particularly in 2021, mainstream Chinese cinema has largely been more interested in local productions starring Chinese movie stars. That’s the other problem most likely stifling Snafu’s release. Once Chinese theaters reopened in July 2021, there was still no word on Snafu, with multiplexes in this country instead focused on screening films like the successful war drama, The Eight Hundred. Snafu could not hit the Chinese box office heights it was striving for if there were no movie theaters to play it. The already uncertain release trajectory of the film was put into even more chaos when the COVID-19 pandemic first shut down theaters in China, Snafu’s primary market, in January 2020 before the rest of the world’s multiplexes followed suit just two months later. The affectionate antidote painted a fine picture of his co-star but Cena offered no glimpse of when this movie would finally see the light of day. Cena referenced Snafu while promoting Dolittle in January 2020, but solely to talk about his love for Chan and how he treats his crew members. This is when things went quiet for the project, with nary a peep emerging in 2019 on plans for when this action film would get released. By the end of the year, cameras had finished rolling on Snafu. “But we want it to entertain audiences everywhere.”įilming proceeded without much of a publicly-known hitch, with Cena revealing his love for living in China during filming in September 2018. “Cross-pollination has always been a challenge,” Waugh noted. The piece concluded with a now-unintentionally foreboding note where Waugh expressed hope that this production could be seen as the new standard for U.S/China film collaborations. The same outlet also noted that the main performers agreed that Snafu (then titled Project X) would hope to replicate the then-recent success of China’s biggest homegrown action films like Wolf Warriors II. “China as a country is bigger and stronger now, so we really need heroes,” Chan explained. “Not only will we make a good movie, I’m going to learn so much.” For his part, Chan was excited about what kind of characters the project could provide to the Chinese film industry. “It’s going to be so special,” Cena said according to THR. Just before filming began in June 2018, director Scott Waugh and lead actors Chan and Cena talked about how excited they were for the film. While there were some ominous signs of problems ahead, these two film industries were largely still chummy and that made a production like Snafu that utilized American filmmakers and actors still seem enticing. Meanwhile, the love affair between Hollywood studios and China that had been ongoing throughout the 2010s was only just now starting to see a hint of problems stemming from tumultuous U.S./China trade relations. This casting occurred months before Bumblebee came out, let alone his more high-profile work in The Suicide Squad or F9. Between then and now, a lot has changed, including Cena’s caliber as an actor. In June 2018, Deadline reported that Cena would be starring in the film with Chan, which would shoot in China. To understand what happened, we have to go to the beginning of Snafu, specifically when the project started to get rolling. RELATED: John Cena on ‘Vacation Friends,’ Balancing the Crazy with Heart, and Matthew Vaughn’s Spy Movie ‘Argylle’
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