Joe Biden Helped His Campaign’s Hollywood Mega-donors Get Their Movies Into China

The LA Times published a story examining how Joe Biden made close friends and big-time contributors out of movie studio executives through his work to open Chinese markets to Hollywood films. The article examines Biden’s direct negotiations with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

Biden’s work has gained him friends in Hollywood circles, most notably with the former head of DreamWorks Animation Jeffrey Katzenberg, who this week will be co-hosting his second fundraiser for Biden.

Read the examination of the Biden-Katzenberg relationship, and their dealings with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, here.

How Joe Biden won friends in Hollywood by helping studios get their movies into China

LA Times | Evan Halper

WASHINGTON — When then-Vice President Joe Biden hosted Chinese leader Xi Jinping for a five-day diplomatic blitz in 2012, a Hollywood Democratic mega-donor kept popping up with them.

There was Jeffrey Katzenberg, then the head of DreamWorks Animation, dining alongside Xi, the then-vice president of China, at a State Department welcome lunch in Washington. And there he was again, standing just behind Xi, then-Gov. Jerry Brown and then-Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa at a Lakers game in Los Angeles. And there was Katzenberg hanging out in a nearby hallway with Disney CEO Robert Iger to provide last-minute counsel as Biden closed a deal in which China committed to considerably expand its market for American films.

On the final day of Xi’s visit, Dreamworks announced Xi had signed off on the company’s own deal — the launching of Oriental DreamWorks, a $330-million joint venture with Chinese companies to develop and distribute animated films in China.

Several of the candidates vying for the Democratic presidential nomination have significant support in Hollywood — Katzenberg, for example, has kicked in $2,800 each to 14 of them already — but none has as long a history of delivering for the industry as Biden.

Read the full story here.