Abstract

Jackie Chan’s Hollywood career began in earnest with the theatrical wide release of Rumble in the Bronx in early 1996 by independent studio New Line Cinema. New Line released two more Chan films – Jackie Chan’s First Strike (1997) and Mr. Nice Guy (1998) – after they were acquired by the media conglomerate Time Warner. These three films, originally produced and distributed by the Golden Harvest studio in Hong Kong, were distributed and marketed by New Line for release in North America. New Line reedited, rescored, and dubbed these films in order to take advantage of the significant marketing synergies of their conglomerate parents at Time Warner. Specifically, this case study analyzes the distribution and marketing strategies of New Line Cinema for the domestic theatrical releases of these three Jackie Chan films. More broadly, this analysis argues that the Hollywood studio oligopoly, backed by fully integrated media conglomerates, has largely controlled the theatrical release of foreign films in North America by not only authorizing, but often by authoring them as well. Finally, this analysis addresses a crucial, though under studied, subject in Film, Media, and Cultural Studies: that being the process, and products, of media importation.