18 Hollywood movies that pandered to China's giant box office

Hollywood is paying more attention than ever before to China, which could have the world's biggest box office by 2017. And that means courting Chinese censors, who allow distribution of as few as 34 foreign films each year.

"No Hollywood producer that wants to take advantage of the Chinese market would at this point include a film that includes anything about Taiwan, about Tibet, about Tiananmen," Aynne Kokas, author of the forthcoming book "Hollywood in China" and a professor at the University of Virginia, recently told Business Insider.

And that's just the start.

"You won't see the Chinese government acting as an enemy to the US state, but you will see the counterexample of things like 'The Martian' and 'Gravity' where Chinese astronauts save an American astronaut," Kokas said. "If the US and China had that level of cooperation in their military and space programs, we wouldn't be having all these conflicts in the South China Sea."

Beijing also looks down on "violent content, sexual content, political content, particularly anything that shows Chinese leaders who are corrupt - American leaders who are corrupt is less of a problem. Also supernatural content," Kokas added. (It's worth noting that China doesn't have ratings, so all movies must be approved for a general audience.)

Kokas expects even more seamless coordination between Hollywood and China in the future, as US and Chinese companies announce collaborative film slates, Chinese companies buy US entertainment companies, US studios announce more Chinese coproductions, and US studios open China-focused subsidiaries.

"There are really structural changes in the US media industry that are less visible to consumers but will have a substantial change in how Hollywood actually operates," Kokas said.

We've rounded up some movies that made obvious changes in hopes of Chinese distribution: