{"id":2480247,"date":"2026-06-29T11:22:57","date_gmt":"2026-06-29T11:22:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2480247"},"modified":"2026-06-29T11:22:57","modified_gmt":"2026-06-29T11:22:57","slug":"what-hollywood-director-renny-harlin-gained-from-chinas-film-boom-and-why-he-embraces-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/what-hollywood-director-renny-harlin-gained-from-chinas-film-boom-and-why-he-embraces-ai\/","title":{"rendered":"What Hollywood director Renny Harlin gained from China\u2019s film boom and why he embraces AI"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Renny Harlin is in tears. The Finnish director behind 1990s blockbusters such as Die Hard 2<\/em> and Cliffhanger<\/em> presented his new thriller, Deep Water<\/em>, at the fourth edition of the Mediterrane Film Festival in Malta on June 26, and two days later is pouring his heart out in an interview with the South China Morning Post in the bar of his boutique seafront hotel.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I think really prepared me for this movie was getting married and having kids,\u201d he announces, suddenly overcome with emotion. His wife of five years, Johanna, who produced Deep Water<\/em> with Harlin and with whom he shares three young children, is sitting close by.<\/p>\n

\u201cI couldn\u2019t have made this movie any time before or understood its meaning, [which is] family and love,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n

The project marks the latest chapter in the 67-year-old Harlin\u2019s unique life, one that has seen him go from the epicentre of Hollywood excess to a six-year period living in China<\/span><\/a>, which began after he collaborated with Jackie Chan<\/span><\/a> on the 2016 hit buddy comedy Skiptrace<\/em><\/span><\/a>.<\/div>\n

\u201cI think I learned a lot there,\u201d he reflects. \u201cI learned about that culture, the people and the storytelling, and how Chinese audiences always expect something really emotional and hopefully also funny in their movies.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Johnny Knoxville and Jackie Chan in a still from Skiptrace (2016).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Initially, Harlin had not planned to stay in China, but the Skiptrace<\/em> experience was overwhelmingly positive. \u201cI fell in love with it, and they kind of fell in love with me because I was very organised and disciplined and had a Hollywood method of doing things.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.scmp.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Renny Harlin is in tears. The Finnish director behind 1990s blockbusters such as Die Hard 2 and Cliffhanger presented his new thriller, Deep Water, at the fourth edition of the Mediterrane Film Festival in Malta on June 26, and two days later is pouring his heart out in an interview with the South China Morning […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2480248,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[30218,22481,397629,367285,366667,22860,310801,453375,488224,384667,309079,376465,488222,311423,488223],"class_list":["post-2480247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-ai","tag-china","tag-deep-water","tag-die-hard","tag-finland","tag-hollywood","tag-hong-kong","tag-malta","tag-mediterrane-film-festival","tag-renny-harlin","tag-samuel-l-jackson","tag-shanghai","tag-skiptrace","tag-south-china-morning-post","tag-the-beast"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/What-Hollywood-director-Renny-Harlin-gained-from-Chinas-film-boom.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2480247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2480247"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2480247\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2480249,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2480247\/revisions\/2480249"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2480248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2480247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2480247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2480247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}