When ‍a Chinese Movie Mirrored My Article About American Football in China

Updated June 09, 2025
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In December, a friend sent me the trailer for⁤ a new Chinese movie called Clash. It’s a sports comedy about a ragtag group of Chinese‍ men who start an American-football team in the southwestern city of⁣ Chongqing.⁢ With the help of a foreign coach, the⁢ Chongqing Dockers learn to block and tackle, ⁣build camaraderie, and face⁢ off in the league championship against the evil Shanghai team.

Funny, I thought. In⁣ 2014, I wrote an article ⁤for The⁤ New ⁤Republic about a ragtag group of Chinese ⁤men who’d ‍started an American football⁣ team in ⁢the ⁢southwestern city of Chongqing. With the help of a foreign coach, the Chongqing Dockers learned to block and‍ tackle, built camaraderie, and—yes—faced off in the league championship against the evil ⁣Shanghai team.

The Chinese studio behind Clash, iQIYI, is not the first to take an interest in the Dockers’ story. My article,⁣ titled “Year of‍ the Pigskin,” was ⁣natural‍ Hollywood bait: a⁢ tale ⁤of cross-cultural teamwork featuring a fish-out-of-water American protagonist, published at a moment when Hollywood and China where in ⁣full-on courtship and the future of U.S.-China relations looked bright. It didn’t⁢ take much imagination to ‍see Ryan Reynolds⁤ or Michael B. Jordan playing the coach—a former University of Michigan tight end who’d missed his shot at ⁢a pro career becuase of a shoulder ‍injury—with Chinese stars filling the supporting roles. Sony bought the option to the article,‍ and also the coach’s life rights. When that project⁢ fizzled a few years later, Paramount⁣ scooped up the rights but never made anything.

Now a ‍Chinese ⁢studio appeared to have ⁣simply lifted the idea. I texted Chris McLaurin,the former Dockers coach⁢ who now works at ⁢a fancy law firm in London. (Since my⁣ original article published, we have ⁤become good friends.) Should⁣ we say something? ⁣Should we sue? At the very least,‍ one of us had to⁤ see the movie. Fortunately, it was premiering in ⁤February at the International Film Festival rotterdam.‍ I booked a flight to the netherlands.

The movie I saw, which came out in Chinese theaters last month, did not alleviate ⁣my concerns. But the film, along with the conversations I had with ⁤its producer and director,‍ provided a glimpse into⁣ the cultural and political forces that‍ led to Clash’s creation. ⁢Indeed,the ⁢trajectory of the IP itself—from the original article to the Hollywood screenplays to⁤ the final Chinese production—says a lot about how the relationship between the United States and China has evolved,or ⁢devolved,over the past decade. What began as a story about⁣ transcending cultural boundaries through sports has turned into a symbol ⁤of just how little China and⁤ the U.S. understand each other—and how little interest they have in trying.

I went to China in 2011‍ as I had a vague⁤ sense that something critically important was happening there. I moved to⁣ Beijing,with funding from a Luce‍ scholarship,and started looking for⁢ stories.

They weren’t hard to find. The years after the 2008 Beijing Olympics turned out to be a remarkable era⁤ of ⁢relative openness. Many international observers saw xi Jinping’s rise in 2012 as the beginning‍ of a period of liberalization, ⁤the unavoidable political outcome of the country’s growing prosperity. For journalists, China was a ⁣playground and a gold mine ⁢at once. We could ⁤travel (mostly) freely and ⁣talk ‍to (almost) anyone. Along with the wealth of narrative material came a sense of purpose: we felt as though we were writing the story of the New China—a country⁢ opening up to the rest of the world, trying on identities, experimenting⁢ with‍ new ways of⁢ thinking and living.

The story that captivated me most was that of the Chongqing ⁣Dockers. It was one of those article ideas that miraculously fall in your lap, and in retrospect feel like fate. I’d heard⁣ that McLaurin, another Luce Scholar, had‍ started coaching a football team in Chongqing, ⁣so ‍I flew down ‍to visit⁤ him. The⁣ first practice I attended was barely‍ controlled chaos: The team didn’t have proper equipment, no one wanted to hit one another, and ‍they kept taking cigarette⁤ breaks. “It was like ‘little⁤ Giants,’ except with adult ⁤Chinese men,” I wrote to my editor at The New Republic. He green-lighted the story, ‍and I spent the next year following the team, as well as McLaurin’s efforts to create‍ a nationwide league.

The movie analogy was fortuitous. Just before the ⁤article was published, sony bought the IP rights, as well as the rights to McLaurin’s ⁣life story. The⁢ project would be developed by Escape Artists, the‍ production ⁣company co-founded by Steve Tisch, a ⁣co-owner of the New York⁢ Giants. maybe the NFL,struggling to break into the Chinese market,would even get⁤ involved.

The deal⁤ changed McLaurin’s life.Sony flew him and his ‍mom⁢ out to Los Angeles, where a limo picked them up at the airport. He met with Tisch and the other producers. They floated Chris⁢ Pratt for‍ the role of ⁣the coach. One executive ⁢asked McLaurin ⁤if he’d considered acting. McLaurin also met with high-level‍ executives at the NFL‍ interested in helping establish American football in China. he’d been planning to apply to law⁢ school, but now he decided to stay in Chongqing and keep developing⁤ the‍ league.

In ⁣retrospect, the China-Hollywood love affair was at⁣ that point in its wildest throes. As the reporter Erich Schwartzel recounts in his⁢ 2022 book, ⁤ Red Carpet: hollywood, China, and the Global ⁢Battle for Cultural Supremacy China spent the late⁣ 2000s and 2010s learning the ‍craft of blockbusting by partnering with Hollywood filmmakers and executives.Hollywood studios,simultaneously ⁣occurring,got access to the growing market of Chinese moviegoers. (In 2012, then–Vice President Joe Biden⁢ negotiated an agreement to raise the quota of U.S. films allowed ⁣to screen ⁣in China.) It was,in effect,a classic technology transfer,much like General Motors setting up factories in China in exchange for teaching Chinese workers how to ⁤build⁣ cars.

With a potential audience of 1.4 billion,‍ every U.S.studio was trying ⁤to make movies ⁢that⁤ would appeal to the Chinese market. This led to some ham-fisted creative choices. The filmmakers ⁢behind Iron Man 3 added a scene in⁣ which a Chinese doctor saves Tony Stark’s life, though it wasn’t included in⁣ the U.S. ⁣cut. The Chinese⁢ release of Rian Johnson’s time-travel ⁢thriller, Looper contained a gratuitous sequence in which Bruce Willis and Xu Qing gallivant around Shanghai. In the same film, Jeff Daniels’s character tells Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s, “I’m from the ⁤future—you should go to China.” ⁢The threat of being denied a Chinese release also resulted in countless acts of self-censorship by Hollywood ⁣studios. Sony changed the villains of its Red⁤ Dawn remake from Chinese to North Korean in postproduction, and removed a scene showing⁤ the destruction⁢ of the Great Wall of China from the Adam ‍Sandler film Pixels.

In this surroundings, Hollywood put a premium on stories that could appeal equally⁣ to American and Chinese audiences. That usually meant going⁣ as broad as possible and‍ leaning away from cultural specifics, as in the Transformers and Marvel movies. But in theory, another, more challenging path existed, the Hollywood equivalent of the⁣ Northwest Passage: a ‍movie that incorporated Chinese and American cultures equally. This could‍ be a breakthrough not only in the box office but also in storytelling. it could even map a⁢ future for the two countries,offering proof that we⁣ have more in common than we might think.

The producers at Sony apparently hoped that ⁢a “Year of the Pigskin” adaptation could pull off that trick. “The movie we want to develop⁤ is JERRY MAGUIRE meets THE⁢ BAD NEWS BEARS ⁢set in China,” Tisch wrote in an email to Sony’s then-chairman‍ and CEO, Michael⁣ lynton. ‍“This is the perfect movie to film in China.” But there was a ⁤puzzle⁣ built into the project. ⁣“The ‍struggle for me was trying to figure out ‍who the movie was for,” Ian Helfer, who was hired to write the screenplay, told me recently. His task was to create a comedy ‍that would be a ⁤vehicle for a big American star while appealing to Chinese audiences. But nobody in hollywood realy ‍knew what ⁤Chinese audiences wanted, aside ⁢from tentpole action movies. They seemed ⁣happy to watch Tom Cruise save the world, but would they pay to see ⁤Chris Pratt teach them how‍ to play an obscure foreign sport?

What’s next

The author plans to further investigate the cultural and political implications of the movie “Clash”⁣ and its connection to the evolving relationship between the U.S. and China.