Is Dwayne Johnson action movie Skyscraper a blueprint for US-China co-production despite being a box-office flop in America?

Skyscraper, co-produced by Universal in the US and the Chinese-owned Legendary Pictures, made almost a third of its US$304 million worldwide box office in China

While the plot was unoriginal, the film offered meaty roles for its Asian actors, ‘paid respect to Hong Kong and Asian cinema’ and was stunningly shot

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Dwayne Johnson (left) and Chin Han in a still from Skyscraper, a film which courted the Chinese market it wanted to break into with respect.

Published: 7:15am, 4 Nov 2022Updated: 12:38pm, 4 Nov 2022

Skyscraper, a 2018 action film starring Dwayne Johnson, might not look like a cinematic trailblazer, but interesting patterns start to reveal themselves when you underneath the surface.

Written and directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber (Central Intelligence), the film – so indebted to US film franchise Die Hard it was jokingly called “Die Hard in a building” – was co-produced by Universal and the Chinese-owned Legendary Pictures.

Because of this, Skyscraper secured a very rare summer release in China, where it made almost a third of its US$304 million worldwide box office.

The plot of the film is rather less interesting than the series it took inspiration from. The prologue shows a hostage rescue gone wrong, in which FBI agent Will Sawyer (Johnson) loses part of his leg and meets his wife, Sarah (Neve Campbell), a nurse, in the trauma unit.

Skyscraper - Official Trailer [HD]

Cut to Hong Kong, 10 years later, where Sawyer is hired to review the security of the world’s tallest building, the 3,500ft (1,066 metre) high The Pearl, for its billionaire owner, Zhao Longji (Chin Han).