porginchina
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Posts posted by porginchina
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1 hour ago, eridani said:
So... are you suggesting that actual earnings potential for any movie that opens in mid december in china is going to be at approximately 30% of what it would have otherwise earned, if there was no covid situation?
So, for example, if Avatar 2 was to earn 500 million if there was no covid, it is on track to earn around 150 million now? (figures are just illustrative, i don't mean to prejudicate how much it would have earned)
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.
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10 minutes ago, Bruce said:
OD record is impossible,Dc3 have 150m dollar and Avatar probably release on working day
Actually AEG not beating China OD record either (held by monster hunt2),so for A2 is normal
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).
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3 hours ago, ZeeSoh said:
With the return of Bob Iger I could see a small increase in the probability that more Disney and Marvel movies could return to Chinese theatres.
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.
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The Way of Water was expensive to make—How expensive? “Very fucking,” according to Cameron, who told me he’d informed the studio that the film represented “the worst business case in movie history.” In order to be profitable, he’d said, “you have to be the third or fourth highest-grossing film in history. That’s your threshold. That’s your break even.” (from the GQ article on Cameron)
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.
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6 minutes ago, xieh tie said:
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
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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.
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4 hours ago, keysersoze123 said:
if it opens on a working day I wonder how high it can go. what is single day BO record in China. Saturday would be in play for A2 for sure.
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.
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2 minutes ago, Issac Newton said:
Release is confirmed. Just Dates are looking weird. WED OD will really be odd if it doesn't meant previews... Not saying anything bad but somehow just do not want to see a weekend getting inflated due to WED OD...
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.
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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…………)
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5 hours ago, IronJimbo said:
If I had to predict what happens in China, my gut says it get's a release does really well then get's stopped in it's tracks as they don't want hollywood movies doing too well. $500m there
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.
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7 hours ago, Bruce said:
I found some news about the phenomenal event when Avatar 1 was released 2009 in China, which show how crazy people to watch Avatar during that time
don’t know if Avatar 2 will have same effect when the film released,we will see
1 in China,Movie theaters are even selling stand-up tickets（watch the film with out seat) for Avatar ticket due to demand When seated tickets are sold out
2 In Shanghai,a 70-years-old lady set up a tent at the entrance of the theater in the middle of the night ,in order to buy an rare Avatar ticket for her son(because All tickets sold out,she have to snatch the next day’s ticket as early as she can),because the weather was too cold, she even wrapped herself in a quilt
3 In Guangdong, the manager of the movie theater knelt down to the audience to beg for forgiveness ,because the Avatar could not be screened on time the film was just burned out
4 in 2009 December,when people meet each other ,they will ask each other
“hey bro you buy the Avatar ticket?”
then get a reply
“no….I try my best to snatch the ticket but it’s too hard to find a threater which Avatar’s ticket still didn’t sold out…”
if you reply
”Yes I snatch the ticket tomorrow!”
then you will get the envy sight from your friend.
The beauty of ubiquitous online ticketing platforms like Maoyan is that none of this should be an issue in 2022!
5 hours ago, Reddroast said:For 3 wouldn't piracy be an issue? If it comes out in April or may ( warmer weather is a huge deterrent to corona viruses)
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).
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11 hours ago, keysersoze123 said:
I am sure they will figure out a way to ban it. There is too much bad blood in US/China relationship and that is not going to change in the near future.
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.
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8 hours ago, Bruce said:
Guys I am don’t want to say that but something bad happen, a crazy sick anti-America patriot(who have huge influence) in China said he can’t stand that China allow Avatar came in,he might hearing some news that Avatar 2 will released in China ,so yesterday he announce that he already collect some fatal evidence which can let Avatar definiely can’t came in China…and he also said he will let Avatar die in China just like Marvel,I really Don’t know if this effect
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.
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16 minutes ago, Bruce said:
12.15 in China
will have offical report before 11.22
Go to watch Avatar 2 Os thread
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.
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50 minutes ago, xieh tie said:
its official, The movie will be released next Chinese new year
Should be interesting to see how this one performs. Should open enormously, but we haven't seen many successful sequels to a Chinese mega-hit yet (not counting anthology films)… Monster Hunt 2 and Detective Chinatown 3 got tanked with toxic word of mouth and Wolf Warrior 3 simply never happened (The Battle at Lake Changjin II, I guess, although I'm not sure how much that counts as a sequel given that my understanding is they went in without a fully developed plan, shot too much footage, and decided to split the movie in two).
From the footage I've seen so far, my hopes are low for Wandering Earth 2; looks visually drab and dour, and there's almost no way that warping the plot to include Wu Jing's character despite his death in the first part will end well. Plus, who knows what'll be going on with zero-Covid and lockdowns in January.
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12 hours ago, The GOAT said:
I can't imagine the BOXOFFICE being on the top 1000 things for them to pay attention
They simply do not care.
For the government as a whole, absolutely not; for the divisions within the government dedicated to regulating Chinese media (including movies), absolutely yes. They have been flexible on the foreign movie quota in the past to meet box office targets (although those clearly no longer matter); more pertinently, China has timed announcements to political events (i.e., Shanghai Disneyland was announced immediately after an Obama visit to China in 2009).
So, yeah, I'm probably deluding myself, but there are faint glimmers of reasoning for hope. Maybe.
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Probably grasping at straws after the absolute misery that has been 2022 at the Chinese box office what with Covid and lockdowns and censorship, but I'm wondering whether we'll see a few more Hollywood movies sneak into Chinese theaters following the Biden-Xi summit in Bali today and what appears to be the partial resumption of high-level US-China dialogue; would be an easy way to signal openness to America and would have the side effect of stemming some of the financial bleeding that domestic Chinese theaters have suffered over the past few years.
(okay so I really want to see Avatar: The Way of Water in theaters so there's a good chance I'm just deluding myself… side note: we're now close enough to Avatar's worldwide release that an announcement of its Chinese release, IF it gets a Chinese release, should be coming sooner rather than later)
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In a weekend where Wakanda Forever took ~$180 million in the States, here in China, 扫黑行动 (The Tipping Point) opened to ¥62.75 million, or ~$8.9 million, in a commanding first place with a ~60% market share.
The "second-largest" box office market in the world, showing its might.
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3 hours ago, charlie Jatinder said:
Yikes. October was Disastrous. Worst ever.
Month 2022 2021 % +/- Jan ¥2,707,944,900 ¥3,329,852,800 -18.68% Feb ¥10,356,941,300 ¥12,269,826,100 -15.59% Mar ¥912,878,500 ¥2,503,584,200 -63.54% Apr ¥566,154,300 ¥2,496,937,600 -77.33% May ¥716,983,400 ¥4,865,987,200 -85.27% Jun ¥1,920,132,200 ¥2,102,434,000 -8.67% Jul ¥3,507,512,900 ¥3,227,917,800 8.66% Aug ¥3,708,158,300 ¥2,050,869,900 80.81% Sept ¥1,269,687,500 ¥2,025,992,200 -37.33% Oct ¥2,139,177,500 ¥7,577,792,600 -71.77% Nov ¥1,873,664,200 Dec ¥2,713,066,900 Total ¥27,805,570,800 ¥47,037,925,500 -34.50% 2022 35% down from 2021 which was eh year in itself. Diff is -43% without New Year week.
November's on pace to be just as bad!! Currently ¥210 million month-to-date without any noteworthy releases on deck; maybe Detective Conan will do okay next week but the Wikipedia tells me it released April in Japan, meaning piracy will take a toll.
One of the huge problems here is a lack of new product— WAY worse than the problems facing the US/Canada. 扫黑行动 (The Tipping Point) just became the first release of any note since National Day kicked off on Sept. 30 (and National Day was historically weak).
It's honestly astonishing how awful China's 2022 has been at the box office.
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4 hours ago, xieh tie said:
hot take
Indeed… having seen Home Coming (albeit without the benefit of English subtitles), the movie's production values are really impressive. For a production entirely shot in China, the North African sequences are incredibly believable.
With that said… for all its production design merits, I don't think Hollywood has anything to worry about. At all. Home Coming has some serious flaws. The action scenes are hectic and confusing and the storyline is laughably unbelievable, especially for a movie marketed as being based on a true story (the villain's an admirably over-the-top reject from a crappy Bond ripoff). On the whole, it's kind of like Wolf Warrior 2, except not as fun. And all this is *without* going into the incredibly surreal postcredits scene where the movie lurches from being pretty tonally serious to including a comedically metatextual post-credits scene
Spoilerfeaturing a cameo from Wu Jing himself to comment on the similarities/differences between Home Coming and the Wolf Warrior franchise
(how I wish I were making that up and yet I am not).
Anyhow, I think that one of the biggest Chinese box office stories in the past two years that most people don't seem to be noticing is how the Chinese audience has quietly rejected many of the more propagandistic movies. The Battle at Lake Changjin II dropped sharply from the original; July 2021's 1921 did so poorly Maoyan turned off the box office projection feature; in the same month, Chinese Doctors made massively less than October 2019's similarly titled Chinese Pilot (from the same creative team) and July 2018's similarly scheduled medical drama Dying to Survive. As far as Home Coming, the movie set a record for screenings during the National Day week and will finish with less than a third the gross of The Battle at Lake Changjin and around half the gross of movies like My People, My Country. Its projected final is well under the goofy comedic vibes of this summer's blockbuster Moon Man as well as the smaller-budgeted, not-at-all-explicitly-patriotic Lighting Up the Stars.
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First foreign movies dated in months (they're all going to flop, probably, but better than nothing…???). Not interpreting this as anything other than a sign that China remains willing to release foreign movies, but any positive sign is better than the absolute barren hellscape of the release calendar here for the past few months.
Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Movie— Nov. 19
Detective Conan: Halloween Bride (roughly translating from the Chinese title)— Nov. 19
Blazing Samurai— Nov. 12
Where the Crawdads Sing— Nov. 25
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34 minutes ago, keysersoze123 said:
So is disney permabanned at this point? What about Thor 4?
Permabanning isn't really a thing in China as they can (and often do) get around to forgiving people for perceived slights against China/the nation-state. Plus, even if they're not making it into theaters, Disney still has a significant presence in China between places like Shanghai Disneyland (which has been closed for two and a half months thanks to lockdown) and stores and merchandising and the like.
The wildly optimistic best-case scenario for Thor 4 is that the movie receives a release date in September similar to Spider-Man Homecoming and Ant-Man and the Wasp since July and August are traditionally blackout months where Hollywood movies aren't allowed to play in theaters. Realistically, however, Thor won't make it to China.
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1 hour ago, Olive said:
And Lightyear.
Hardly surprising between the film's inclusion of a gay kiss and Chapek recently earning the ire of the super-online Chinese nationalists for stating that Disney is going fine without China.
Genuinely impressive to see how quickly the folks in Beijing are eroding China's status as a global box office power player.
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4 hours ago, Brainbug the Dinosaur said:
If the number of theaters open stays at the same level as of now, what can we realistically expect for JW: Dominion? Does something like 50M sound realistic?
Realistically, it's a mystery. I think $50 million US is not totally impossible… things are steadily reopening (Beijing has partially reopened theaters; Shanghai shouldn't be too far behind) and there's been an astonishing lack of new movies for the big screen, which could help build anticipation. That said, grosses have been so low that really who knows. And, as ever with China, a lot depends on the movie's social media scores.
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China Box Office Thread | Oppenheimer-August 30
in China At The Box Office
Posted
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.