Bob Violence

Haven't seen the latest numbers yet, but based on its UK performance from its first two weekends, it's going to finish below Pineapple Express and probably even Funny People. "Acceptable" is the politest description. If this can't do well in the UK, I can't see it doing well in any overseas market.

WB self-distributes in Japan. WWZ is distributed or co-distributed by a Japanese company (Toho), but it doesn't make much sense that WB would collude with them to damage their own movie. I think it's safe to say WB will do their level best to make PR a hit in Japan. (In fact they have a pretty big presence there--they even distribute a good number of local films.)

As far as anyone knows it is banned (just like every film that hasn't passed through SARFT). We're speculating about the future here.

I'm aware of all this. There was absolutely nothing from either the Film Bureau or WB citing the specific reason for its non-release in China (the closest thing was a statement from WB mentioning "cultural sensitivities," with no further elaboration). The Hong Kong scenes were obviously the reason, but that was (and AFAIK still is) entirely speculative, absent official word from any of the parties involved. With Django Unchained the prevailing explanation is that the censors overlooked some nudity, but neither Sony nor the Film Bureau have ever admitted it. In that case the only "official" explanation is China Film Group's claimed "technical reasons," which not even official media outlets accepted at face value. You know the funny thing about that? The Zombie Survival Guide was officially released in China just a couple of years back, despite the supposedly unforgivably anti-China book the author wrote several years earlier. So if they're trying to keep this Max Brooks character off of the Chinese public's radar, they kinda blew that one already. (Come to think of it, why would they pass The Dark Knight Rises when it all but requires you to watch The Dark Knight before seeing it?)

The Wrap article is the only one I've seen on the issue and they don't say. The Film Bureau never explains this sort of thing, and while Chinese filmmakers occasionally comment on their issues with the local censors, Hollywood studios usually don't. For example, we only have rumors as to why Django was pulled on the day of release, or why The Dark Knight never came out in the mainland. None of the speculative reasons offered in the Wrap article are very compelling--I've already commented on the Pitt/Seven Years in Tibet issue before, and zombies aren't a problem in and of themselves, given that most of the RE movies have come out there and there was a domestic zombie movie released last year (which is supposedly unwatchable).

I might be wrong here, but I'm fairly certain South Korea is really the only Asian country except Japan with a long local tradition of kaiju/giant monster movies. Might be something to keep in mind when attempting to extrapolate from PR's Korean performance.

TT2's date is confirmed, they've already got a poster out. TT1 will be gone by then and part two was shot at the same time, so it's probably ready to go anytime they want. As firedeep already noted, the two Tai Chi movies had the same gap between them and more or less the same problem (lower-than-hoped-for results and poor WOM). I think Tai Chi II would've done even worse if it had come out later, because frankly nobody would've remembered Tai Chi I after a six- or twelve-month gap. TT doesn't have the exact same problem, since it's based on an existing franchise with a built-in fanbase, but it's not a totally dissimilar situation. TT2 would probably lose everyone except die-hard fans if it came out in December or next year, but releasing it while part one is still fresh means some more casual viewers of part one might come in to "finish" it (though they're planning to make two more films down the line). Releasing it in December would all but guarantee the non-fans would go to one of the other big films coming out then. Mr. Go is a Korean-Chinese co-production about a teenaged girl who inherits a baseball-playing gorilla. It's live action and the gorilla is done with CGI (not too shabby to judge from the trailers, but then Korea does some good CGI--some big-budget Chinese films actually outsource their CG scenes to Korean outfits). Also, it's in 3D. It looks totally ridiculous but in an entertaining way. I have a soft spot for animals doing sports stuff--I saw Most Valuable Primate 2 in the cinema and I'm not ashamed to admit it...

Monsters University has been officially dated for August 23rd, as opposed to the earlier 8/25 date. That means it opens on a Friday instead of a Sunday. It's still too close to the end of the summer holidays, but every day helps, I guess. Certainly it'll benefit from having a proper opening weekend. Also, Tiny Times 2 is coming out on August 9th, not in December as everyone was expecting. Part 1 seems to be performing below expectations--they're crying all the way to the bank, of course--so perhaps they decided the December competition would be too tough. It'll still have some competition, since August 9th is around the time of the Qixi holiday and some other hyped local films will be coming out then (I'm already sick to death of the ads for Palace).

The censors rejected a particular cut of the film (presumably the one released everywhere else) when it was submitted for review a few months ago. It was made clear at the time that Paramount could and would resubmit it after changes. If there's been any news of a subsequent rejection, I haven't seen it. If you know something nobody else here knows--including firedeep, who's probably more plugged into these things than anyone else here and seems convinced the film still has a shot--then share it.

Mainland China and Japan. No release date yet for either territory, as far as I can tell. Don't expect anything when and if it does finally come out there.

The only reboot it can be reasonably compared to is TASM (which had its Chinese box office cannibalized by TDKR). The Incredible Hulk and Batman Begins were released in what was essentially a totally different market.

To doesn't have a great box-office record (all figures from firedeep's annual lists, in RMB with the yearly ranking afterwards): Love for All Seasons (2003, co-dir. w/Wai Ka-fai) - 10m, #21 Running on Karma (2003, co-dir. w/Wai) - 7.2m, #27 Turn Left, Turn Right (2003, co-dir. w/Wai) - 5.5m, #32 Yesterday Once More (2004) - 15m, #18 Election (2005) - 6m, #40 Triangle (2007, co-dir. w/Tsui Hark and Ringo Lam) - 27.4m, #21 Sparrow (2008) - 17m, #36 Don't Go Breaking My Heart (2011) - 96.2m, #37 Life Without Principle (2012) - 26.1m, #92 Romancing in Thin Air (2012) - 20.1m, #101 Drug War (2013) - 145.9m Breaking News was released in 2004 but isn't on firedeep's list for that year, which means it placed no higher than #30 and made less than 2.4m. Throw Down isn't on the 2007 list, so it placed below #49/7.4m. Linger and Mad Detective aren't on the 2008 list, so they didn't place in the top 60 and made less than 6.98m. I'm excluding stuff before 2003 because the lists are too short for those years. Note that even with 146m Drug War won't finish in the top 30 (it was #21 as of 6/20). I think it and Blind Detective will be in a pretty tight race--Drug War was more of a "mainland" film and got a lot of attention from the violence and the subject matter. Blind Detective is by most accounts more of a Hong Kong-style movie and its success will largely hinge on how eager mainland audiences are to see Lau and Sammi Cheng reteam after all these years. I think distributors and exhibitors are treating that as a bigger draw than it actually is. Cheng certainly isn't a draw by herself (Romancing in Thin Air was her "comeback" movie and look how well that did), and Lau might've seriously damaged his brand with Switch (for which he's sorta kinda apologized).

Bullet to the Head is getting a buyout release on the 9th. I assume it hasn't been mentioned yet because it already bombed everywhere else and pirated BD rips have been going around for over a month now. But whatever.

The theory is that Brad Pitt movies are banned in China because of Seven Years in Tibet. That doesn't hold much water, since Mr. and Mrs. Smith got a release and the director of Seven Years is in China at this very moment filming a co-production with China's biggest state-run studio. As sensitive as Tibet may be, it doesn't seem to be much of deal-breaker where films are concerned; to give another example, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus got a Chinese release even though it featured a brief appearance by the Dalai Lama (which was naturally cut from the Chinese version). The original novel is a different question, but it seems odd they would be so upset about that--an element not present in any version of the film--while allowing G.I. Joe 2 to get away with showing the president of China as a bumbling coward complicit in an end-of-the-world scenario, just so long as it was cut from the Chinese version.

I'm going to guess that the majority of the one-star reviews are from people who haven't seen the movie. Over on Mtime it had an overall rating in the low 2s well before it even came out (it's now up to the high 3s). Not that I'm defending the movie--I haven't seen it, maybe it's crap--but it's just that the user ratings for this movie are dictated more by what people think about the novels and especially the author (who also directed the film). If nothing else, I seriously doubt the movie is as bad as Switch, which truly earned its 2.9/10 rating.

Supposedly Iceman part 1 has been moved to Chinese New Year. Which might mean part 2 at Qingming, that's just a guess though.

Jackie's Police Story 2013 confirmed for December 24th. Should be a big'un.

The AV Club turned me on to this one a coupla months back. There's actual honest-to-god merchandise for this floating around in redemption games. The doll of the Haylie Duff catgirl character is missing all of the feline features, which had led some to guess that she was a regular human until someone pointed out that would add a somewhat creepier dimension to her romance with the Charlie Sheen dog...

Of course it'll make $20m. Anything less than 50-60 would be a huge letdown if STID can do $55m with far lower brand recognition. You can't compare MoS midnights to IM3 because IM3 opened on a holiday and MoS isn't. Plenty of people who might've gone to a midnight screening of MoS aren't going to do it if they have to be up in the morning for work.

According to this, it was ¥731 million from 545,000 admissions.

$0, they never came out there. Virtually no Hollywood comedies do except for the occasional romcom.

Yeah, but two with the same leading man seems like a bad idea, especially since Yen frankly doesn't have a lot of goodwill after his last few films.

What about those reports that Iceman 3D has been split into two parts and part 1 will be out in December? Two expensive Donnie Yen tentpoles in the space of a month sounds like a recipe for disaster. So are those reports inaccurate, or are the distributors competing for an end-of-year release and waiting to see who chickens out? On a different subject, what about National Day? I remember you said a while back that the Detective Dee prequel was pushed to December, so what else is likely to be out in late Sept/early Oct?

720p trailer http://youtu.be/V9mnUE-7mKk

I don't know about those movies specifically, but films at the SIFF are still occasionally cut. There were a lot of complaints when they screened a censored version of Black Swan a couple of years back. Maybe they learned a lesson, but I think if they had a choice between a cut version of Stoker and not screening Stoker at all, they'd choose the cut version. There are actually some Chinese movies that got R ratings in the U.S. Kung Fu Hustle got an R even though they submitted the cut mainland version instead of the original HK cut. Red Cliff, Curse of the Golden Flower, Flying Swords of Dragon Gate, City of Life and Death, The Flowers of War, Sacrifice, and both of the Ip Man movies all got Rs as well. Some of those I understand, but an R for Kung Fu Hustle is kind of ridiculous...