“I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship,” Humphrey Bogart says in the famous last words of “Casablanca.”

They may also be the starting point for the emerging but tentative relationship between China and Hollywood.

The recent Shanghai International Film Festival has revived discussions about whether the dream factory of the US can form a meaningful and lasting partnership with China’s fledgling film industry. The buzzword is co-production.

In 2012, China became the world’s second-largest film market after the US. At that time, China limited foreign film imports to 34 a year. It was a frustrating hurdle for Hollywood filmmakers who wanted greater access to such a growing market.

Hollywood wanted more of its films in Chinese cinemas. China wanted to nurture development of its own industry. The obvious middle ground was collaboration.

For the Chinese, co-production means access to the experience of the world’s most famous storytelling machine. For Hollywood, it means cash-rich Chinese investors waiting to be tapped and a market of millions of fans waiting to be entertained.

“Chinese audiences are hungry,” Eric Rong, president of TIK Films, told Shanghai Daily during the film festival which ends Sunday. “They are starving. They are crying out for good movies.”

At first, Hollywood is treading gingerly. Many Hollywood productions have been partially shot in China or have enlisted Chinese actors in supporting roles. Some films have hired Chinese crews or incorporated China-related elements.

Though these attempts at cultural rapprochement have often been commercially successful in China’s booming movie market, few have really grasped the hearts of Chinese audiences.

“You need to feed them something truly fantastic, rather than just patching together some Chinese elements here and there, hoping to make some renminbi (Chinese currency) from this market,” Rong said.

“The market is still waiting for true co-productions with good-quality films and for partnerships that really understand what China is.”

In 2014, the box office on China’s mainland rose 36 percent from a year earlier to about 30 billion yuan (US$4.83 billion). It is expected to surpass the US as the world’s largest movie market in the next three to five years.

“That is an incredible number to get the attention of all the Hollywood studios,” said a Shanghai-based film producer, who asked to remain unidentified because he is working with a US film studio.

“But it’s a delicate balance between pleasing Chinese audiences and still making a story convincing for the rest of the world audience, which knows very little about China and often isn’t interested anyway. Nobody has really found that magic formula yet,” he added.

It’s not that studios aren’t trying.

A special Chinese version of “Iron Man 3,” in which Chinese actress Fan Bingbing appeared for a few more seconds than in the global version, was the subject of public debate, with detractors calling it tokenism.

The James Bond flick “Skyfall” managed to squeeze in a small segment based in China.

Many Chinese audiences still remember the bewildered excitement when they first watched characters in “Transformers: Dark of the Moon” name-dropping some familiar Chinese brands.

“Man of Tai Chi,” a 2013 Chinese-American, multilingual martial arts film directed by and starring Keanu Reeves, failed both critically and commercially.

More co-productions are in the pipeline. Paramount announced plans to make a 3D movie adapted from the classic novel “Journey to the West.”

DreamWorks has announced it will produce a third installment of its successful “Kung Fu Panda” through Oriental DreamWorks, its Chinese joint venture.

“It is difficult because there are very limited genres of movies you can make work with Chinese elements,” Rong said. “Superhero movies are popular nowadays. But if you make a Chinese superhero movie, it will just look fake because we don’t have a superhero comic culture like Marvel, and the idea of individual heroes is just not rooted in Chinese culture.”

In the last few years, scores of Chinese companies, including big names like Alibaba, Wanda and Huayi Brothers, have sent representatives to Hollywood to meet the influential honchos at American studios. The meetings were many, the results few.

“People in Hollywood are getting tired of all these meetings,” said Schuyler Moore, a partner in American law firm Stroock & Stroock & Lavan. “Most of these Chinese companies are just window-shopping. They are not serious about closing deals.”

Moore, a Hollywood veteran, often represents foreign companies in negotiations with Hollywood studios. Most recently, he represented China’s TIK Films in a deal with Lionsgate.

Under the agreement, TIK Films, affiliated to state-owned Hunan TV & Broadcast Intermediary, will invest 25 percent in all movies that Lionsgate produces in the next three years, with the exception of very small budget movies or movies that offend Chinese sensibilities.

TIK Films is relatively new to filmmaking, and the deal came as a surprise to many when it was announced earlier this year. The share price of TIK Films more than doubled within weeks.

“Many foreign companies, when they go to Hollywood to invest, care only about returns,” said Moore. “But Chinese companies always want to have some China parts in the movies. They want to sell Chinese movies and Chinese culture to Hollywood.”

The question remains: Can authentic Chinese culture be conveyed in movies with box-office appeal globally?

Aiming for an Oscar, renowned director Zhang Yimou tried to straddle the gap in his 2011 movie “The Flowers of War,” starring Hollywood heartthrob Christian Bale and Chinese actress Ni Ni. The film was selected as China’s entry for best foreign language film, but it failed to make the final shortlist.

“It is a matter of how to depict a good story that can be understood and appreciated universally,” said Rao Shuguang, general-secretary of the Chinese Filmmaking Association. “We don’t lack good stories, but we have to find and learn the methods, techniques and channels to sell them globally.”