Production 1: The Simpsons

Steve Spence
Updated: 17 January 2016

Hollywood and Global Commodity Chains

Star Wars ProfitabilityAs the China Daily article suggests, a great deal of U.S. animation is now produced overseas. Live-action feature films and television, on the other hand, continue to be made largely in the United States by U.S. workers.

This is only a small part of the story, however, as the example of Star Wars illustrates. This graphic comes from a Vox article titled Star Wars will make its real money in the mall, not the cinema. It illustrates the fact that most of the industry's profits now come from ancillary products like action figures and apparel. And the vast majority of these items are now produced by Chinese and other overseas manufacturers.