Open Book with Anthony Scaramucci - How Hollywood Sold Out to China — Chris Fenton

Episode Date: October 6, 2026

Hollywood thought China represented the biggest growth opportunity in the world, but somewhere along the way, we started changing our movies, compromising our values, and teaching them how to compete with us. Chris Fenton was in the room when those deals were being made, and today he’s sounding the alarm about what America got wrong and what we need to do before it’s too late. Chris Fenton served as president of DMG Entertainment Motion Picture Group and GM of DMG North America, internationally orchestrating the creative and business activities of DMG- a multi-billion-dollar global media company headquartered in Beijing. He has produced or supervised twenty-one films, grossing $2 billion at the worldwide box office. Get a copy of his book Feeding the Dragon: Inside the Trillion Dollar Dilemma Facing Hollywood, the NBA, & American Business here: https://amzn.to/4xYdPlt Anthony Scaramucci is the founder and managing partner of SkyBridge, a global alternative investment firm, and founder and chairman of SALT, a global thought leadership forum and venture studio. Order my next book, All the Wrong Moves: How Three Catastrophic Decisions Led to the Rise of Trump here: ⁠https://www.scaramucci.net/allthewrongmoves Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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And unbeknownst to the average viewer around the globe, we were actually putting small bits and pieces of propaganda messaging and narrative into movies. And you cut to today, a lot of that messaging and narrative has really influenced younger generations around the world. When you think about the way we grew up, we grew up with a lot of movies that had the USSR and the movies. And when you thought about Russia and the Soviet Union, that culture shaped the way you thought of it. I think of it still the same way I didn't in the 80s because the culture I was absorbed. So I think of gorky park and sleet and freezing rain and KGB spies and people addicted to alcohol and lines to get bread and just misery, misery, misery, misery. And that's because that's what culture taught us. But if you look at China today, the reason sentiment is so strong towards China and is decreased with the USA in relation to those two systems is because we're not allowed to show anything bad about that market.

Welcome to Open Book. I am your host, Anthony Scaramucci. Joining us today is Chris Fenton, media executive, producer, and author. The title of the book is Feeding the Dragon Inside the Trillion Dollar Dilemma Facing Hollywood, the NBA and American business. And we've talked before. You came on in Salt Talks during COVID, Chris, to talk about your book. But I wanted to bring you back because there's a lot going on at the highest levels of Hollywood

international media. And so take us back. How did you end up becoming a key person connecting Hollywood to China? And why are we all in trouble with China right now from a business perspective? Yeah, well, the genesis of it had nothing to do with a sort of a career strategy. It turned out I had built an interesting business after being at the William Morris Agency, which is now endeavor for a decade. I came across a handful of individuals in China right around the turn.

of the century that were interested in investing in the film and television space. And unbeknownst to me, really in a way to essentially encourage and influence the type of messaging and narrative we were putting into global content. As that relationship flourished, I ended up started my own company and then eventually sold it to the Chinese, and we ended up going public in 2014 on the Shenzhen Exchange. But at the time, we were the number one player in terms of putting together major studios with partners in China to make some of the biggest blockbuster movies the world was viewing in theaters at the time. Iron Man 3 was the largest of them that went on to make $1.3 billion worldwide. But just in the China market, we broke every

single box office record. And unbeknownst to the average viewer around the globe, we were actually putting small bits and pieces of propaganda messaging and narrative into movies like that and various others. And you cut to today, a lot of that messaging and narrative has really influenced younger generations around the world. Give me a couple examples of the messaging and the narrative. Yeah, well, we did a startling one, which I talk about in my book, is a movie called Looper, which was Bruce Willis and Joseph Gordon Levitt. It was a time travel thriller. Bruce Willis plays the same character as Joseph Gordon-Levitt, but 40 years aged older. And in the script, the original script by Ryan Johnson, who went on to make the knives out and various other big films,

he had the future 40 years from now taking place in France. That's where Joseph Gordon-Levitt, when he retired as a mobster, he wanted to go to what he thought was the utopian market country to live out the remainder of his life. And what we ended up doing in order to get Beijing behind that movie so we could get the film into that market is we changed the script so that the future took place in China. And then we had various individuals that we put into the film that were Chinese, including Summer Ching, who was Bruce Willis' wife. And we had various quotes in there that became some of the highest testing quotes when we tested it with audiences around the world, including one where Jeff Daniels is essentially slamming down a table as Joseph Gordon

Levitt's characters saying, one day I want to move to France, and he slams down his fist and says, I'm from the future. You want to move to China. Going to France. You should go to China. I'm going to France. I'm from the future. You should go to China. I'm going to France. You're going. And those were exactly the moments where we knew we could actually craft really good

movies for the world, yet also pleased Beijing in terms of the global narrative and messaging they wanted out there. So what do we get wrong? How do we get this all wrong? So we were placating Beijing, but they are, they don't think the way we do. We got this wrong in trade. We said, okay, we're going to bring them into the World Trade Organization. They're going to eventually adopt our system.

They're not adopting our system. They got their own system. And they've got their own system of control over people. It's capitalism, but it's not freedom. So what do we get wrong? Well, what we got wrong was dating back to 1971. with Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon when they opened up what was a frozen relationship between the U.S. and China. And they essentially touted this idea that if we open up the markets so that we can actually get U.S. products and services into that market,

we would grow GDP here. We would increase jobs. And on top of it, we would spread the aspirational quality of democracy inside a communist country. Of course, along the way, various people started to realize maybe that wasn't working. And a lot of us learned a little bit too late. So if you cut to today, one of the things that if you look at the entertainment business per se, what we did, and it's being essentially exemplified around the world right now, too, is that in order to placate Beijing, we had to, yeah, we wanted to sell fish in that country,

but to do that, we had to teach them how to fish. So we did a lot of mentor-protech programs. We taught them the best in the world, best in class ways to make. movies to build facilities and all that kind of stuff and we actually got them so that they could get their own domestic industry up to speed on a world-class level like ours. So circa say 2012, 2013 when Looper or Iron Man 3 came out, we were controlling about 80% of that of that China box office market. Cut to today we're about 5%. But even worse is the fact that we've taught them all our industrial capabilities when it comes to making

content, producing content in film and television. And we repeated that not just in China, but around the world, to the point where today, 60% of our production in film and television is done outside of the United States of America. Iron Man 3. Chinese product placement, government sign off. Take us inside the deal. What happened there? What did Marvel get and what did Beijing get? Well, at the time, Marvel had. hadn't had any movies penetrate that market and make any sort of dent. In fact, when we signed on to co-finance and co-produce Iron Man 3 with Marvel and Disney, their biggest hit was Iron Man 2, which did roughly $20 million in that market.

What we decided to do with Iron Man 3 is we worked with Marvel to essentially create narratives inside the film that placated Beijing. One of the big directives that Beijing had was to exemplify, China as the dominant leader in biotechnology and in technology capabilities. So we actually created a character named Dr. Wu because Marvel's head at the time, Kevin Feigy loved that Steely Dan song. So his name was made Dr. Wu. But Dr. Wu was the only scientist, biomedical technologist that could actually save Tony

Stark and remove the RT from his heart without killing him. And that was something that really made Beijing excited. But then on top of it, we worked with them on this massive scale production to actually teach them how to do it themselves. We actually helped them build facilities outside of Beijing while we were actually making that movie. And the end result of that is even though their last movie made $20 million across its run, we made $20 million in the opening day in China and went on to make $125 million alone in that

market. And that was back in 2013. So, I mean, basically, here's the irony. Okay, we're pursuing this enormous market. It turns out that the market is big, but it's not as big as the 1.3 billion people. But then it has catastrophic effects on our home market. And so lay that out for us. Lay out the thought process of what we were doing and lay out, you know, the effect of that decision made.

Well, a huge effect. which a lot of people sort of, I mean, this is the part that's hard about me explaining why this is not in the best interest of the United States of America. Yeah, we made money over there. You know, yeah, we are not making as much money as we used to. Yeah, we're trying to placate them with narratives and messaging. But why is it that big a deal? Well, number one is you could look at Axios today, where it shows sentiment towards China is now way more popular. than it is for the United States of America. And one of the reasons for that, and I don't, I'm not going to ask you what your age is, but I'm 55 years old. So I'm 62. You can ask me, brother. I'm, as my father would say, I'm playing the back nine.

But in my own mind, I'm a spring chicken. Yeah, well, compared to me, you look like a spring chicken. Actually, no grays or anything. Anyway. Well, that's between me and my color is fenton. Okay, that's like go crazy, right? Well, you got a good one. When you think about the way we grew up, we grew up with a lot of movies that maybe had the USSR's Soviet Union, former what Russia used to be in the movies, you know, from anything from, you know, a James Bond movie to, you name it, some sort of rusky film.

And when you thought about Russia and the Soviet Union, that culture shaped the way you thought of it. Like, I have never been to Russia. I've never been to Moscow. In fact, I have no interest in it. In fact, after listening to Silva's interview with you the other day, I definitely don't want to go there. But I think of it still the same way I didn't in the 80s because of the culture I was absorbing. So I think of gorky Park and sleet and freezing rain and KGB spies and people addicted to alcohol and lines to get bread and just misery, misery, misery, right? And that's because that's what culture taught us.

But if you look at China today, the reason sentiment is so strong towards China and not as decreased with the USA in relation to those two systems is because we're not allowed to show anything bad about that market. We're not allowed to show criminal activity. We're not allowed to have a villain from China in a Bond movie or a born identity. We can't show dirty clothes hanging from a clothes rack in Shanghai. high. We can't show criminals getting away from the, from lawmakers. We can't show any smog, freezing rain, any of that stuff. In fact, we shot parts of Iron Man 3 in Beijing during a very smoggy period. And we had to cut all of that out of the film because they only want blue sky shown. So cut to today. I know you have five kids, I believe. I have two. They're 19 years old.

When I asked them, what do you think of China? They think of gleaming sky. gravers that they think a state-of-the-art infrastructure. They think of happy people in the most incredible malls you've ever seen. They think of incredible social media, happy people, a thriving economy. They think really well of China. They think that system is very interesting. And it's because that's all they've been absorbing. They have not been allowed to see things that are actually real and on the ground and happening over there. Listen, it's powerful. Okay. So you've worked with some of the biggest names in entertainment, right? Robert Downey Jr., Johnny Depp, Michael Phelps. When you were inside that world, did the people genuinely believe that globalization was inevitable,

Chris, or were there already concerns about what America was giving up? Well, it's interesting. I dove head first into globalization. I literally, if you think about how grateful I am to have the colorful career I've had and the fact that I'm still out there making movies and got one coming out next week. You know, it's an amazing sort of journey. But the reality of it is up until about late 2019, I actually really believed in the mission that we had that was the higher calling over having a fruitful and successful career and making money or whatever it was. It was that idea that we were spreading aspirational quality of democracy inside a communist country and we were doing ultimately something good for America, GDP growth, jobs, you name it.

It turns out I got punched in the nose in 2019 when Darrell Mori, the GM of the Houston Rockets tweeted out his Fight for Freedom Stand with a Hong Kong tweet and that created the whole muddled mess with the NBA, which we had worked with over the years. But many others have seen this problem earlier and some have seen it later. And what's crazy is at this point, there's still people touting this in full engagement, reckless capitalism idea between the U.S. and China. When we seriously know now, with 100% confidence, it's not in the best interest of the United States. So I would say during those Phelps times, those Robert Downey Jr. times, Johnny Depp times, I was full bore into whatever we can do to get our products and service.

in our market, it was in the best interests of our country. So I'm going to give you a magic wand. And I'm going to say to you, okay, you can wave the magic wand and this is exactly what we would have done differently, Chris. What would we have done differently? Well, I think, you know, it's always good to have clear-eyed vision when you enter anything. I mean, let's face it, nothing is black and white. Nothing is perfectly good or perfectly bad.

there's always a gray in there. And I think if we were aware in 1971, first of all, ending a frozen relationship with the other superpower, it wasn't at the time, but we knew it was going to grow into one in 1971. Ending that frozen relationship was 100% the right thing to do. We want to avoid kinetic conflict with them. But the reality is we needed to understand what Beijing's modus operandi was, where they wanted to go, and how they play this long game, a chess when we on two to four year election cycles and 24 hours news clicks and, you know, high frequency trading and everything else, we're much more programmed to play checkers on a short-term basis, right? And they have that strong superpower of looking at the long game.

And if we knew that their goal was eventually to dangle the carrot, get us in there, have us teach them essentially the Alexander Hamilton, playbook of us, the way we went after Europe in the early 1800s to catch our industrial revolution up to them, we stole a lot of IP. We were doing all kinds of tech theft. We were doing all kinds of protectionist policies. And our goal was to beat the Europeans and essentially build the best economy in the world. If we understood that China was trying to do the same thing and using our exact playbook, it would have been nice for us to actually know that, think about it, with everything we do because the reckless capitalism that we did put capitalism ahead of patriotism.

If we simply put patriotism before capitalism, we're much stronger as a foundational relationship with China because there is great capitalism to do there. But we just need to make sure we're protecting the foundation of what makes this nation so strong and powerful and the ability for this nation to protect the capitalism that is the way we wanted to. to be the system we want it under because the way it's going now, it's becoming capitalism with Chinese characteristics. And you can ask Jamie Diamond when he wants to talk about a bad investment asset in China and he wants to warn investors publicly about it. The last time he did that, Beijing came down on him pretty hard. You can look at the Minsk Group. You can look at all the

different McKinsey's and so on and so forth. They can't talk poorly about China in regards to anything. And that is a real problem. So we have to put our country first, but also realize we don't want a kinetic conflict. And there is great capitalism to have there. We just need to do it on our terms. This is a meta question now. It's not necessarily related to your career. I'm going to put you in the seat of advising an American government.

Because I would say the American government made the same mistakes that Hollywood made in terms of the way we let China into the World Trade Organization that we didn't write. regulate them, and then they pace growth at 11 percent, and they stole all of our manufacturing. What would you say to a policymaker? Let's say I sat you down with the president or a secretary of the Treasury or Commerce and said, hey, this is what I learned from my experience dealing with China, and this is how you guys should handle them. What would you say? Yeah, what's interesting, I'm still an informal advisor to the Select Committee on China, which Congressman Mike Gallagher brought me into before he retired. And they're still very, very important. They're still very very vocal and you know it's a it's a good vocal piece as far as making sure people stay aware

of the issues but the real power is with you know our trade reps and the White House in terms of that relationship and how it's conducted I would absolutely love to just sit in those rooms and hear what they talk about and just chime in from time to time the experiences I've had because there's a lot of good intentions from either the hawks or the doves, but the reality is you have a system of government that is looking to protect itself. The only way to do that is to keep 1.3 billion people just happy enough that they don't revolt. They simply don't have enough resources to make everybody happy. They just have to make them happy enough.

And part of that is the tangible giving them what they need, but then also spreading this propaganda and messaging that their system of government will provide them more if they believe in it and support it. So when you look at a lot of the things that China does and you're questioning, well, why are they taking that tactic? You just have to think about what their self-preservation role is and what they're trying to do. Because even if you look at the way they spread their wings around the world, a lot of that has to do with massive resource scarcity, whether it's fresh world. which, by the way, Russia has Lake Bacal, which is just north of it, and there's been all kinds of tension over that 23% of the Earth's surface water. They have major food shortages. They have major energy shortages, resource shortages. So they're really trying to do a lot of things that

are simply in their self-interest rather than it's really trying to spread a leadership profile around the world. But then on top of it, there are a couple of things that are massive national security issues that we also have to address. And it's a very complicated process. But I think we have to make sure that we're always putting patriotism before capitalism. And we're always thinking about the long game and the self-preservation role that the CCP has in terms of what they're trying to accomplish. You know, listen, I, you know, I, when I tell you what I worry about is capitalism and our greed, you know, there's an expression in Italian greed always overcomes wisdom. And so we see that market and we say, okay, let me equivocate whatever my values may be because I want to

participate in that market. And I think it's come back to BITIS. It turns out that there's a, it's not a velvet glove. There's a steel porcupine glove in that market. And it comes back to Bidus. You know, technology, in my opinion, and maybe it's your opinion, I'd like to hear yours, has changed Hollywood. It's made it, you know, totally different. It's changed Hollywood almost in the same way that globalization has changed it. So with all of this virtual production and AI and all this sort of stuff reshaping the industry, do you think this will make us less reliant on international markets, less reliant on places like China?

Well, the China market has, you know, we taught them how to fish. So they're catching their own fish. We're down to less than 5% of that box office now. So that market is pretty cooked. We do have major in the media and entertainment space. We still do have major interests there, including like Universal has a massive theme park in Beijing. Disney has a huge one just outside of Shanghai.

So there's still going to be this agenda of making sure you're on the right side of the Beijing sort of do you, are you liked by them or are you not liked by them? very important because you just don't want to have your global company blackballed from the market. But if you look at AI technology, the way of cost efficiencies can start occurring, I think one of the big things that I'm out there pushing and I have what I wanted to do. Like it's one thing to call to attention things that are wrong and it's another thing to scream at the ceiling. But for me, it's always about, well, what can you do actually to help? So, you know, the select committee was one thing. There's various other things that I do with Washington, D.C., in terms of the China relationship. But another one I wanted to do was put my money where my mouth is, and I'm working with an entity called Loam Entertainment. We created 100% fully American-made movie about Summer Camp. It's a PG-13 comedy. I mean, nothing up for the Oscars, but it's a really fun comedy that comes out next week. And one of the things I wanted to showcase is the fact that we've forgotten how good. good our craftsmen here, how good our creatives are, how good our on-screen presence there is in this

country. And why can't we make a fully American-made movie anymore? 60% are done outside of this country now. In fact, we a lot of times we have American roles filled in by Australian or South African or UK actors too. So I wanted to showcase the fact that we started this. We make great American-made product and we can actually monetize it on a great level. And then on top of it, we have the best facilities in the world here, too, state of the art, soundstages and backlots that are literally going bankrupt. In fact, Goldman Sachs got the keys turned back for CBS Radford, which is where we used to do Seinfeld and Survivor Finaleys. CBS Television City is now in bankruptcy and even Manhattan Beach Studios down the street from my house where we actually did part of

Iron Man 3 and part of the Avengers is out bankrupt also. So we have real issues here with an industrial ecosystem that was thriving at one time that was employing three million Americans across the country. We're talking about 80% of all film and television production when the ecosystem is healthy is done outside of California and Los Angeles, which I'm well aware of because I'm right now in Nashville, Tennessee. A lot of people don't care about California and Los Angeles. But they do care about their fellow citizens that are losing jobs or maybe working one job instead of the four jobs a year that they used to in this industry. And that's also 250 billion in wages. So I'm out there saying, hey, you can make these movies. You can monetize them. And quite

frankly, we need to support bringing back this production in this particular industry the same way we're trying to do it in others. Really good stuff. So I I'm at the point in the podcast now where we have five words. We sort of pulled them from your book. I'm going to say the word and then you're going to give me a sentence or two. Okay, you ready? Yeah. I say the word film.

You say what? Storytelling and shaping a worldview. You and I think very similarly. I think storytelling and cultural exportation. Mm-hmm. We export our cultures through film. Okay, I say the word China. You say what?

Big opportunity. but be careful. Yeah, and also a very complex system. You know, it's more afraid and less unified than people think. You know, I mean, they're gluing that thing together. What about America? I say the word America. You say what?

Grateful. Me, I see endless aspiration. Censorship. That's a complicated one. I'm a massive free speech advocate. I hate any form of censorship, even with hate speech. So I'm going to say be careful and don't do it. So you know what I say,

only during times of war. Just trust me, you're never going to not censor during a war. It's just the way it works. All right. Last word. I'll give you the last word, Hollywood. A toxic term right now that we need to make untoxic. Hollywood is Washington for good looking people, Chris Fenton.

That's why you live in Hollywood, sir. The title of the book is Feeding the Dragon inside the trillion dollar. dilemma facing Hollywood, the NBA, an American business. Chris Fenton, thank you for joining us today in Open Book. Yeah, and if I can, I want to say thank you. I'm grateful that I was back on here. And also, please go support your fellow Americans and see a fun PG family comedy with your family, with your friends, your kids. It's safe, no political ideology and very nostalgia about the summer camp days. It comes out next Wednesday in theaters around the country. And you can go to at badcounsellors.com to find out where the nearest theater is.

So thank you and I really appreciate it. I look forward to seeing it. I got young kids that are perfect for it. I look forward to seeing you and I'll report back to you. I'll let you know what I think. Well, I really appreciate it, Anthony. Thanks for having me on and keep up the great work. Your interviews are fantastic.

Well, thank you, brother. There's always a pleasure to have you with us. We'll get you back.