Jake Gyllenhaal finally had his stand-alone movie South Paw hit the theatres. Directed by Antoine Fuqua, the film is about a boxer who has to fight to win back his daughter. For the role of Billy Hope, Jake Gyllenhaal had to get a massive, bulky body that required a lot of hard work.
Even though critics haven’t given the film a good review, Jake Gyllenhaal’s movie is making a lot of ripples in Hollywood because of its producers. It is the first film that was entire financed by a Chinese company.
The total $30 million budget of South Paw was financed by Wanda Pictures, which is owned by the richest Chinese man, Wang Jianlin. He is a real-estate tycoon and according to Bloomberg, his estimated worth is $34 million.
This move of a Chinese company producing Hollywood movies is seen as a favorable move by the business experts. It is said that since the rate of ticket sales in US are stagnating, it is expected that the sale of tickets in China for Hollywood movies is expected to go up and even cross the sales recorded in United States.
Wang Jianlin has previously shown interest in the movie industry. He had invested $8.7 million to make a movie theatre spanning over 3.7 million square meters and had also bought the second largest theatre chain in America, called AMC.
However, there are certain restrictions in China when it comes to filming Hollywood movies. There is a quote of 34 Hollywood movies that can be shown in a year. This quota is going to increase by 10 movies by 2017 to include Oscar nominations and art house films.
South Paw is a product of the Weinstein Company and Wanda’s association with Weinstein has pushed it ahead of its rivals Tencent Holdings and Alibaba Group. South Paw might not be a very successful movie, but the buzz surrounding it started when a clip of the film was shown by the studio boss Harvey Weinstein at Cannes this year.
Jake Gyllenhaal’s startling transformation to fit the role of a veteran boxer had made the critics sit up and notice. He reportedly added 7 KGs to fit into the role. Gyllenhaal still seems to be carrying the weight from the movie.
The actor was seen strolling at Soho dressed casually in white t-shirt and gym shorts with a bearded face. He had on a pair of dark glasses and was seen yawning away, which indicated that he had been pulling out late nighters and was kind of exhausted.
The actor was recently seen on the Sirius XM show hosted by Howard Stern who broached the topic of his ex-girlfriend, Taylor Swift. Jake Gyllenhaal had briefly dated Taylor Swift for three months in 2010.
Howard Stern who is known to not mince words said that he believed that Jake Gyllenhaal should have held on to Taylor Swift. He said if he had been Gyllenhaal’s friend he would have advised them not to break up. Stern went on to say that he would have wanted Gyllenhaal to marry Swift because that would have made them a power couple.
Jake asked why he didn’t call him on the show before and also said that Taylor Swift was an extremely beautiful girl. When Robin Quiver, Howard Stern’s co-host added that Swift had even written a song on Jake and her relationship and was part of her Red album, Jake asked in a surprised manner if it was true.