The Business
China Has a Change of Heart on Filmmaker Jean-Jacques Annaud
The 1997 movie Seven Years in Tibet was banned in China, and its director Jean-Jacques Annaud barred from entering the country. A decade later, China came to Annaud and asked him to direct Wolf Totem, an epic Chinese movie. Annaud tells us what changed.
By Kim Masters • • 29m ListenFrench director Jean-Jacques Annaud has made movies around the world. The one place he never thought he’d made a movie was China. The government there got upset about his film Seven Years in Tibet, and Annaud and star Brad Pitt were told they were not welcome in the country. So Annaud was quite surprised to receive a visit from Chinese producers asking him to adapt the best selling Chinese novel Wolf Totem into a film. Annaud shares why China changed its mind on him, what it takes to make a hit there, and what it was like working with lots of Mongolian wolves. He also remembers his friend and frequent collaborator James Horner.
Photo: Director Jean-Jacques Annaud on the set of Wolf Totem. Courtesy of Columbia Pictures
