A Chinese remake of “Baywatch” is in development as the latest step in China’s insatiable hunger for American entertainment content.
The series’ co-creator is in talks to revive scripts from the original lifeguard series – the most watched show in the world, according to the Guinness Book of Records – and adapt them for the new market in a close replica of the escapist sun-and-surf formula.
“China likes the lifestyle represented by the show, the blue skies, the sex appeal, the iconic characters and the concept of lifeguard heroes in life-or-death situations,” said Michael Berk, an L.A. writer-producer who co-created “Baywatch” and wrote most of the episodes.
Berk, the driving force in the adaptation, said the new series would not try to reinvent the wheel.
“The idea is to adapt the best old scripts, using whichever stories are best suited to the Chinese market,” he said, “and shoot it on an island in China, somewhere that’s their equivalent to Hawaii.”
“Baywatch,” which ran from 1989 to 1999 and as “Baywatch Hawaii” from 1999-2001, starred David Hasselhoff – who was also an executive producer but had no equity in the show – and made a global superstar of Pamela Anderson. It was also the first American show to get major distribution in China, where it was dubbed into Mandarin and became a huge hit in the early ’90s.
Now, Berk said, the time appears right for a local version after a flurry of recent Chinese investments in Hollywood and a growing appetite for American content.
“It’s a time of confluence and convergence with an open door to a ground floor where billions of consumers are hungry for the common denominator of all cultures – the human experience as depicted in comedy and drama,” Berk said.
He said he has been negotiating with Larry Namer, chief executive of Metan Global Entertainment Group, a China-focused entertainment company with offices in Woodland Hills, Shanghai and Beijing, with a view to Namer’s company developing the show and getting it on the air alongside the five other series it has airing there.
Metan Global’s subsidiary, Metan Development Group, develops and distributes entertainment content and media specifically for Chinese-speaking audiences. The division adapted CW Network series “Gossip Girl” a couple of years ago, transforming it from a show about spoiled rich girls in New York to spoiled rich girls in Shanghai.
Metan Development’s flagship show is Mandarin-language “Hello! Hollywood!,” a weekly entertainment news series launched in 2009 that offers celebrity and pop culture reports tailored to Chinese audiences. It is available on more than 40 television stations in China and six in North America, reaching more than 1 billion viewers.
Namer, a co-founder of E! Entertainment Television, acknowledged negotiations were under way over “Baywatch,” but said nothing has been completed.
Through a spokeswoman, Namer, who was in Singapore last week, said, “There is no deal between Metan and ‘Baywatch’ at this point. Michael Berk said he thinks there should be. I tend to agree with him, but there is nothing to discuss right now.”
Speaking at the Alternative Funding Forum in Century City last month, Namer said programming in China’s market offered not only a chance to reach more eyeballs, but to sell product.
“We bought ‘Gossip Girl’ from Warners, rewrote it and recast it, and we integrated product into the show,” he said at the conclave. “For example, one character asks another, ‘Where did you get those great shoes’ and she replies ‘Sparkle.com,’ Well, we actually own Sparkle.com. We have a shoe designer on staff and have a shoe factory. We have sold a lot of shoes.”
Facing east
A Chinese remake of “Baywatch” would be just the latest in a string of deals between Beijing and Hollywood.
“Hollywood is the best place on Earth to satisfy global ambitions and as a result there has been a flow of private investments from China,” said Victoria Silchenko, an alternative funding expert and chief executive of West L.A.’s Metropole Capital Group.
“There is a clear synergy between local filmmakers and Chinese investors,” she said. “I am wondering if we will see even more steps to closer relationships given the current market trends and ambitions for profits and global relevance from both sides. The Chinese theatrical movie market is growing at an unprecedented rate – now up to $3.6 billion.”
It is clear China is very much in love with Hollywood and is showing the love with a string of big-money deals.
Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., China’s biggest e-commerce company, is seeking to invest in the Hollywood film industry, and billionaire Guo Guangchang’s Fosun International Ltd. has already put $200 million into former Warner Bros. film chief Jeff Robinov’s new independent studio, Studio 8.
Heading the other direction, DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc. of Glendale last week announced plans to launch a kids and family channel that will be available in 19 countries in Asia. The studio said the channel would launch with more original content than any other kids channel in the region.
One of the first of the recent bridges between the cultures of China and Hollywood came last year when Chinese TV manufacturer TCL Corp. paid $5 million for a 10-year naming rights deal for the venerable Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, now the TCL Chinese Theatre.
Meanwhile Chinese company Dalian Wanda Group already owns AMC Theatres, the No. 2 theater chain in the United States, and has recently been looking to buy control of Lions Gate Entertainment Corp., the independent studio based in Santa Monica that’s behind the “Hunger Games” and “Twilight” franchises.
Other opportunities
However the deal with Metan plays out, Berk said “Baywatch” is in the midst of a revival.
The show lasted just one season before being canceled by NBC, but Berk, Hasselhoff and the show’s other producers took it over, rejiggered the format a bit, and brought it to the first-run syndication market through Fremantle Media, then a small London distributor that has since gone on to produce the wildly successful “Idol” and “X Factor” series on American and British television.
Berk said he is in discussions with Fremantle for other opportunities for the “Baywatch” brand in addition to the Chinese TV remake.
“We have a ‘Baywatch’ movie in development at Paramount with Dwayne Johnson attached for the lead role, and I am also working on bringing a ‘Baywatch’ musical to the stage,” he said.
“Plus I just worked with David Hasselhoff again, producing a new comedy movie he is in that we recently filmed for release in 2015,” he said. “It’s called ‘Killing Hasselhoff,’ and stars Ken Jeong from ‘The Hangover’ as a man who loses all his money and can only pay his bills if he collects on a celebrity death pool bet he made that David Hasselhoff would die soon.”
