In May 2012, News Corp acquired a 19.9 percent stake in Beijing-based Bona Film Group, after Bona's 2011 3D release Flying Swords of Dragon Gate took in $68.9 million in China, ranking ahead of Harry Potter and the Deathly Harrows (Part 2) that year.
Fox teamed up with Huayi Brothers, China's leading non-State sector film group, for several films, including the 2011 release Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, which was co-produced in China by Wendi Deng, the China-born wife of Rupert Murdoch, founder, chairman and CEO of News Corp.
While some Hollywood studios are doing co-productions, the film industry also saw Wanda, China's largest enterprise investor, spend $2.6 billion in 2012 to acquire AMC theaters in the US. The new ownership means US audiences will have more chances to see movies made by Chinese producers in AMC theaters.
While involved in co-productions, Chinese producers and directors are also seeking Hollywood's help to duplicate the success of big-budget US films.
Lost in Thailand, a low-budget slapstick comedy, became China's highest-grossing domestically produced movie in December, drawing 32 million people to theaters.
Its US opening-week box office gross in February 2013 was only $57,397, according to IMDB, the Internet Movie Database of information on films, television programs and video games.
Stanley Rosen, director of the East Asian Studies Center at the University of Southern California, says subtitled films don't do well in the US. They make up about 1 percent of the market and are seen as "art" films by distributors.
"They can't compete for screen time at the multiplexes with the 'big films'. Films like these won't have much of a budget for prints, advertising and marketing," says Clayton Dube, president of USC's US-China Institute.
Ang Lee
Among a handful of Chinese movies that have been successful in the US was Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, which made $128 million. Another is Zhang Yimou's Hero at $55 million, Rosen says.
Yang, who grew up on New York's Long Island and studied Asian studies and Mandarin at Brown University, says being bilingual and bicultural help her understand the US and Chinese markets as a movie producer.
"Some Chinese directors want to make international movies, but they have not spent enough time abroad," she says.
"It's about sensibility. It takes an international person to make an international movie."
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