porginchina

My (imperfect) understanding is that it's mid-December or nothing for Avatar; as a foreign movie, they don't have the negotiating power to wait until after theaters reopen. There's no political pressure to maximize Avatar grosses in the same way that there's political incentive to maximize The Battle at Lake Changjin grosses. Marketing in China is relatively inexpensive as China's a very digital-forward society, so that's not going to be a huge factor in the decision they make, especially for a non-Chinese movie (remember that Fantastic Beasts and The Batman both came out in similar circumstances earlier in 2022). With all that said, if things get really dicey, I could see Avatar being denied a release to keep people from crowding movie theaters.

I don't know how heavily the seat restrictions per theater actually matter; closing about half the theaters nationwide is a pretty big deal. Restrictions look like they're going to get a LOT stricter in the weeks to come— within the past hour, Shanghai (where I live) announced massive limits on any fool who tries to enter the city from another province. So regardless of the seats available… I'm expecting dampened grosses.

Plus it's incredibly likely that more than 40% of theaters in China will be closed with the remaining theaters at a maximum of 50-75% capacity and also watching a movie entails scanning a health code and you get locked down or quarantined if big data shows that you were too close to a confirmed positive case or close contact of a confirmed positive case (in other words, going to the movies, like doing literally anything else in China right now, comes with an element of risk).

I think it's more than a small increase… Iger's got actually good relationships with China (including a record of meeting one-on-one with Xi Jinping) and Chapek's a political moron who failed in Florida and managed to piss off Beijing during earnings calls.

I remember the days when Cameron's mission for the Avatar sequels was to make them cheaper and quicker than the original. Seems like that… didn't happen.

Seems like box office goes up when you release new movies, who knew? November to date stands at a soft ¥454 million ($63.3 million USD) with ten days to go; November will join March 2022 (¥912 million), April 2022 (¥566 million), and May (¥716 million) 2022 as the first months* in a decade** where the aggregate Chinese box office fails to hit ¥1 billion. No new releases of note confirmed beyond Friday's Where the Crawdads Sing (which feels unlikely to score huge). *not counting 2020 when theaters were totally shut **November 2012, ¥975 million; March 2012, ¥833 million

Assuming that Way of Water plays anything like its predecessor, I don't think Disney needs to go all-out on all the marketing… awareness now seems pretty strong and anyway, this isn't a movie engineered to smash opening records. It's a movie engineered to dazzle anyone who sees it in a theater and generate ridiculously strong word of mouth. The theatrical experience of Way of Water, with the level of care put into things like shot construction and visual polish (and, yes, 3D) should blow the competition completely out of the water and lead to strong repeat business/word-of-mouth.

The next contender for a single-day box office record is The Wandering Earth 2 on Jan. 23 (Spring Festival). Generally, you need the combination of a holiday and massive hype… I actually don't think Wandering Earth 2 will be able to take the record due to a) Covid b) the movie won't have the same must-see-at-once factor of Detective Chinatown 3, which promised answers to mysteries set up in the second part. As an aside, my optimism for Disney's abilities to release movies in China increased massively in the last five minutes. Welcome back, Iger.

I just want to know what day it comes out so I can take inform my employers that I'll be at the movie theater and not the office. With that beefy runtime, not sure I'll be able to squeeze in four showtimes on opening day, but I can sure try. PANDORA HERE I COME.

Animation looks beautifully rendered, character designs seem very Pixar, concept seems very familiar. Can't say I have any burning desire to go out of my way to see this but I'll eventually get around to watching it eventually, possibly. Maybe. As an aside, the rough Chinese title is 疯狂元素城, or Crazy Element City, which is very much in the pattern of 疯狂动物城 (Crazy Animal City, aka Zootopia). For an original movie, the concept is disappointingly derivative (and the animation, while beautifully rendered, lacks the originality of Spider-Verse or Bad Guys or Turning Red or…………)

My guess for China… gets a mid-December release, is hindered by lockdowns, opens surprisingly quiet but then holds decently until it gets yanked from screens in mid-January for the Spring Festival releases. My very, very, very, very rough guess is something in the ¥2-2.5 billion range (so, like… in the vicinity of $300 million). Honestly I don't care what this thing makes in China so long as it opens in China… I've been waiting almost 13 years and I fully intend to experience The Way of Water on the big screen the first second I am capable of doing so.

The beauty of ubiquitous online ticketing platforms like Maoyan is that none of this should be an issue in 2022! Coming out in April or May would be a real surprise for Way of Water; from my understanding, current expectation is that it'll come out roughly day-and-date with the rest of the world. Plus, the big Chinese releases have been shifting back repeatedly, likely trying to flee to less coronavirus-impacted months; foreign movies like Avatar can be placed in theaters at times when Chinese movies would rather not screen. Assuming that it did have a massively delayed release, while piracy would be an issue, Cameron's also likely created enough of a theatrical experience that the movie would still sell at least some tickets (remember that the 2021 rerelease of Avatar made ~$50 million in China off basically zero advance warning/marketing).

One actual cause for hope is that the US/China relationship seems to be possibly on the mend… well, at least possibly en route to stabilizing. The Xi-Biden meeting is a hopeful sign; Xi traveling outside of China (without wearing a face mask) is perhaps a positive sign for China trying to aim in a less isolationist direction than the country's been heading in the past few years. We'll see.

1) Yep, there's a reason I'm not going to believe that Avatar 2 releases in China until I'm seated in the theater and the movie starts playing… with that said, one self-serving nationalist troll only has so much influence. (I scrolled very quickly through Weibo just now and didn't see much conversation condemning Avatar or suggesting that Avatar will be banned). 2) I think there's still cause for hope. Cameron & Co. have been playing their political cards really well; recall that they've been screening footage for government types, the movie's been specially mastered for China-created premium formats like CINITY, and Cameron's got a ton of goodwill from Titanic and Avatar. 3) China's been on a huge theater-building drive for years and unless something changes very soon, a great many theaters will go out of business. We've already seen some increased flexibility with zero-Covid to shore up the economy; China does care about its economic/business numbers. Every Chinese movie theater account I follow on WeChat has been posting Avatar content for months; they're counting on revenue from this thing. Plus, Avatar is a foreign movie that has to deal with whatever date the government gives it, unlike the big Chinese movies which have been fleeing Covid lockdowns for supposedly safer box office waters. Basically, I'm still in wait-and-see mode. I could very easily see Avatar being denied permission to screen; I hope it still screens and think there's still a very convincing case that Avatar comes to China.

As ever— and especially this year— with China, absolutely nothing's official until it's official. But if those rumors are true I'm going to be so happy/might consider ordering myself some blue facepaint via Taobao so I can do a midnight screening in full Pandoran spirit.