A Cultural Analysis of the Fast& Furious Franchise's Popularity in China

Abstract

The Fast & Furious franchise from Universal Pictures has become a global phenomenon. Fast & Furious 9 (Justin Lin, 2021) was released one month earlier in Russia, the Middle East, South Korea, and China than it was in the United States in May of that year. The film gained its top box office from China ($203,881 million), while it only scored around $80 million in the US. This study investigates the many cultural variables that have contributed to its ubiquity in Chinese society. Cross-cultural study was used to determine the popularity of Fast & Furious in the Chinese cultural setting. This article explores a variety of cultural and thematic characteristics projected by the Fast & Furious franchise, such as the idea of family, individuality and collectivism, and considers them as the major reasons for the success of the Hollywood blockbuster in China. The contribution of the paper is also dual. On the one hand, this article applies film analysis to cultural models usually used in organization context research. This article uses Hofstede's cultural dimensions model to study the popularity of Hollywood franchises in a Chinese context. On the other hand, investigates the popularity of the Fast & Furious franchise in China based on a variety of Chinese traditional cultural factors.