porginchina

I was hoping for some awareness that Disney's struggles with China are becoming more and more unique to Disney; while I wouldn't expect Chapek to directly say that his current administration is incompetent, some awareness of the need to cultivate relationships in the country and respect Chinese citizens beyond coveting their money would be nice. Ultimately, Chapek's response is overly simplistic and fails to answer the questions asked by shareholders in any meaningful way. While no American company needs to operate within China, Disney has made significant investments towards building their presence in the Chinese market, most notably with Shanghai Disneyland. If you're committed to China, then take China seriously and treat the market with some basic respect. Also, if you're committed to maximizing your shareholder's return on investment, then take China seriously and treat the market with some basic respect.

Disney CEO Bob Chapek on China— (Source: https://deadline.com/2022/05/disney-ceo-bob-chapek-china-dr-strange-1235021804/) More context from Deadline: My take— yes, Disney is obviously struggling to get their films into China, but they co-own two Chinese theme park resorts, have had phenomenal success getting release dates even after the movie industry was put under the CCP's propaganda department in 2018 (China was one of the first markets Endgame opened in, and it opened right before the May Day holiday). That Turning Red hasn't yet acquired a Chinese release while Warner Bros. and Universal are doing just fine tells me that there's a Disney-specific problem working with the Chinese. Reading Chapek's words overly literally, if Disney's current strategy is "submit the movies for approval and see what happens," that's an awful strategy that fails to take into account anything with Chinese business culture. Iger went to the effort of building strong relationships with Chinese government officials; seems like Chapek isn't making any such efforts? Don't see the problems that Disney's been having under Chapek causing an issue for Avatar: The Way of Water since Cameron is politically savvy with regards to China, but for general Disney releases like Lightyear and Thor: Love and Thunder…

There might be more hope in the second half of the year, depending on how the Party handles Omicron. Right now, they're just locking down harder than ever in an attempt to zealously show their dedication to dynamically achieving societal zero spread, or whatever the current smear of jargon-y Xi-pleasing buzzwords happens to be. But the economic damage caused by the policy is extreme and they have to pivot at some point. Living in China, I've been consistently amazed at how central the economy is to the legitimacy of the entire political system of modern China. An economic crash will look very, very bad for the leadership and will be almost impossible to cover up. I rather suspect that once Shanghai is deemed to be cleared of Covid, we might— might— start seeing some sort of pivot. Possibly. It may not be labeled explicitly as a pivot (there's a lot of interpretive wiggle from in "dynamic zero-Covid"), but it's possible. Tl;dr— yep, the situation looks bleak as hell right now, but zero-Covid won't last forever and the government will be strongly incentivized to get the economy functioning again in the relatively near future.

Found this piece on China's May Day box office haul—https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202205/07/WS62761f41a310fd2b29e5b3d4.html An 80+% year-on-year drop as "better than expected." The moviegoing picture is bleak in China, at least for the foreseeable future.

Bad Guys has received a one-month extension in theaters until June 28 as theaters remain generally quiet. Shanghai's numbers are getting better (at least where I live, Covid testing continues at a ferocious pace, so the downturn in cases is likely due to an actual downturn in cases; we've been receiving nucleic acid tests every 48 hours). So far no word on when Jurassic World Dominion might receive a release. Personally, I'll be surprised if the first big release after this round of lockdowns is a domestic movie as I can't see regulators wanting to force a domestic film studio to shoulder that risk (the first big release in 2020 was The Eight Hundred, a movie that had been blocked from its initial release due to governmental conflicts and was thus politically expendable; I can't think of any high-profile Chinese movie in the past few months to suffer from such backlash).

With the visuals, based on conversations with friends/family, I think that from the perspective of the average theatergoer, there's not a huge difference between Avatar and the trailer for Way of Water. While more attuned fans/visual effects enthusiasts/etc. are going to notice the jump in detail and naturalism for the sequel, Way of Water marks a visual upgrade from what people have seen before as opposed to a visual revolution. That said, Cameron's on a level of his own as a visual storyteller and I'm fairly confident that the experience of watching Way of Water in a theater in 3D is going to blow audiences out of the (metaphoric) water.

YES. I generally don't believe in dealing with the loading times required for 4K videos, but I am so ready to make that exception for Avatar.

Having watched the trailer a dozen times, I'm so happy right now. After a dozen-plus long years, we're finally going back to Pandora!! Nice balance between the old and new in this footage, as well… felt great to see the floating mountains again and appreciated the brief check-in with the goons at RCA. Can't wait to discover how everything fits together in the finished movie! (Also this minute and a half of footage makes me even more delighted that we've still got a further three Avatars after Way of Water; going to be really fun seeing what a masterful storyteller like Cameron does with so much screen time at his disposal to create what could easily be a generation-defining epic)

Not seeing a massive CG upgrade from 2009, but a) I'm currently limited to 1080p HD on my laptop b) the original Avatar has better CG than 99.9% of every movie that's come since. That said, this looks absolutely beautiful and I will be beyond shocked if any other 2022 blockbuster even comes close to touching Way of Water's visuals. Seems like Cameron's managed to expand the scope of the story beyond what we got in the first one. Time to stop the race for the Best Visual Effects Oscar.

Do we know when the trailer releases online? Like, officially releases? I know that there are sketchy bootleg versions floating around out there, but I want my first glimpse at the return voyage to Pandora to be in dazzling HD (ideally I'd have been able to see the trailer in IMAX, but I live in Shanghai, so… feeling the need for some Avatar footage to spice up my ongoing Covid lockdown).

Chinese box office year to date— 14.851 billion RMB (~$2.227 billion US) US/Canada box office year to date acc. Box Office Mojo— $2.040 billion The gap is closing. The US/Canada should regain box office supremacy before Shanghai's lockdown lifts (aka by the end of the month).

With ¥157 million, Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore has officially surpassed The Batman (¥156 million) to become the official box office champion among imported movies in China in this year of the Covid lockdown. Source: Maoyan.

I'm torn between being impressed at a $90-plus opening day and feeling slightly depressed at the ridiculous extent to which Marvel continues to monopolize the US box office. Although maybe I'd feel more charitable towards Multiverse of Madness were I able to see it in theaters. Regardless of whether this thing hits in the $190 millions or soars past $200 million, it's still an enormous opening and a strong weekend, especially given the reported $200 million-ish budget (and a large enough opening that the movie's lack of play in China, Russia, Saudi, Egypt, etc. becomes a relative nonissue). The problem becomes, what happens once the movie starts sinking like a rock and audience-attracting movies are scarce on the ground until Top Gun Maverick?

An excellent analysis of China's current moviegoing dilemmas from the wonderful Sixth Tone (a state-sponsored yet highly reputable newspaper): https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1010275/chinas-cinemas-are-struggling?source=channel_home Some quotes—

With continued virus restrictions in Beijing and a fresh outbreak in the city of Zhengzhou (10 million people) in northern China's Henan province, China's movie theater count is dwindling again, now down to ~66% according to Maoyan. Time will tell whether this decline is a brief blip on the path towards eventual normalcy or whether the current box office malaise will linger well into the summer. Shanghai's outbreak still rages on and Beijing has yet to get their outbreak under control. Going to be a really interesting year in the People's Republic (it is, however, worth noting that China has started making adjustments that will eventually pave the way for some form of exit from dynamic zero-Covid, but that's a ways off still).

Five-day box office for the May 1st holiday currently at ¥288 million ($43.6 million) as of about 6:00 p.m. China time May 4. There's still some time remaining tonight with the prime moviegoing hours, but still looks like it'll be 80+% off the previous five-day May 1st holidays 2021 (¥1673 million), down 80% from the four-day May 1st holiday in 2019 (¥1527 million), and less than a third of the three-day holiday in 2018 (¥1006 million). Not great.

Sherlock Holmes did just fine against the original Avatar in 2009 off a similar strategy of opening against Avatar's second weekend. There should still be plenty of room for counter-programming against Pandora this Christmas, especially if Shazam can provide solid, fun, family-friendly entertainment and generate decent word-of-mouth of its own. I can't see Shazam meaningfully challenging Avatar for box office supremacy, but it could carve out a niche unto itself as there is a significant difference between a Cameronian epic and a superhero romp; I'm assuming the movie will have a looser, goofier vibe than Way of Water, plus audiences like superheroes. TL; DR— There's room for more than one blockbuster at Christmas.

A mixture of factors, I'd assume. Keep in mind that China doesn't believe in explaining itself super clearly— they derive more leverage from uncertainty. But a few possibilities: Xi's general drive towards more Chinese nationalism and the increasing influence of online super-nationalists (the so-called keyboard warriors) on government direction Politically important events like the 100th anniversary of the Party in 2021 and Xi's re-election later this year are causing regulators to be more scrupulous than they otherwise would be Heightened international tensions due to the pandemic (as well as political missteps by the Xi administration resulting in a surge in anti-China sentiment abroad) Overconfidence in the domestic Chinese movie industry's ability to keep theaters afloat (right now looks like they'll produce 2-3 big mega-hits a year, which just isn't enough… the mid-range has really fallen out of the market) For Multiverse of Madness, anything connected to Falun Gong in your movie is going to be an immediate ban. We're talking similar levels of political sensitivity to the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989; even when screenshots from Multiverse of Madness were circulating through Weibo to criticize Marvel, many netizens blurred out the offending text (the censors still struck down a number of images). Ultimately, all of this is just speculation, albeit informed speculation. In the short-term, I'm growing steadily less optimistic in China's direction, particularly as we see more and more political entrenchment, but long-run I remain generally hopeful about the country's potential.

Link to full story (partially behind a paywall): https://puck.news/the-chinese-had-one-note-on-spider-man/ Quoting the relevant section— Assuming this is true (and it seems plausible), the film regulators in Beijing are doing an excellent job of ensuring China's future irrelevancy as a film market and massively undermining their own global influence. (Also, nationalistic tabloid Global Times has weighed in on the Multiverse of Madness madness: https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202205/1260710.shtml; nothing new or interesting, really, but worth noting that we've now got semi-official confirmation of the government being irritated). Wonder if we'll get any fuss from the Chinese side when the US/Canada surpasses China's 2022 box office, possibly within the next week.

My understanding is that dynamic zero-Covid will continue until they've a) vaccinated most of the elderly b) acquired a large enough stockpile of effective treatment drugs c) I think they're also hoping that the virus becomes less deadly. China has a huge elderly population with a ton of preexisting conditions and a very unequal distribution of medical resources between developed cities like Shanghai and the rest of the country. In the immediate term, abandoning the zero-Covid measures would be a disaster as the medical system would get overwhelmed (and you'd have general societal chaos). They are moving into a new phase of pandemic prevention by trying to up the elderly vaccination rate and requiring near-constant nucleic acid testing for people. The situation does appear to be getting better; Shanghai's numbers are going down, but nobody I know places much faith in the figures the government has been releasing (the city government has lost so much credibility throughout this crisis). Beijing's in quasi-shutdown now and is trying to mass test their way into normalcy. I believe Shanghai is generally expected to return to normalcy either late this month or early June. Hopefully the market as a whole is back to functioning by then as well.

Played around on Maoyan today and looked through the database of monthly Chinese box office tallies going back to January 2011. Turns out, Zero-Covid really bites. Of all the months on record (not counting February-June 2020 when theaters were entirely closed, or July 2020 when theaters were closed for most of the month and then only screened re-releases for a few days), April 2022 is the lowest month on record (¥565 million/$89.5 million, also known as slightly more than what Sonic 2 made its opening weekend in the States). China's overall box office is slightly past $2 billion US at current exchange rates, or approximately $150 million ahead of the US/Canada. I'm guessing that 2022 US/Canada box office should easily vault past China in the coming weeks (I'm guessing Multiverse of Madness' US opening will do the trick). China's run as the world's largest box office territory is finished, at least for the foreseeable future.

I… have a hard time believing that posted is real (i.e., you'd think that a Chinese-language production focusing primarily on the Chinese-speaking audience would release a Chinese-language poster before any English posters); looks like nothing more than wishful fan thinking. With that said, a hypothetical Kung Fu Hustle 2 could make a massive amount of money in China. Like, assuming decent word of mouth, $500 million easy (and that's probably lowballing it). Stephen Chow has huge name recognition and the original Kung Fu Hustle is a well-recognized classic (I won so many "good foreigner" points after moving to China because I recognized the movie).

In other China box office news, Maoyan reports that more than 60% of theaters nationwide are open (62.36%) in advance of the May Day holiday period. The map informs me that Shanghai is the only province still without any operational theaters as Covid-struck Jilin has started to open back up, although Beijing has announced that it'll be suspending theatrical operations from "April 30 to May 4." Living in Shanghai, I trust that they're shutting down Beijing theaters today, but after the past few weeks of disastrous governmental communicative incompetency, who knows when Beijing's theaters will be back online. With that said, the nationwide Covid situation does appear to be getting better. Shanghai reported no community spread yesterday, although I'm not sure how that's calculated because my housing complex recorded another case, resetting our two-week timer until we're allowed back on the streets. Cases outside of Shanghai are in very low numbers. Best guess from following the situation over the past few weeks is that Shanghai's numbers became so extreme that they overwhelmed China's ability to quickly and efficiently squash the virus, resulting in the rolling nationwide lockdowns. Looks like they're trying to pivot towards a system that, at least for the immediate future, will rely on continual Covid testing (Shanghai is setting up hundreds if not thousands of nucleic acid kiosks throughout the city and the government has announced that tests will be free until at least June 30). Should note that the overall Chinese economy is in serious trouble, to the point that the political system could fall under some degree of stress; analysts I've read online have started comparing the level of discontent to 1989. This is a major political year in China as Xi goes for his third term, but between the Russia-Ukraine conflict and Omicron taking a real bite out of the Chinese economy (the economy is important politically everywhere but to an exaggerated degree in China), well… it'll be really interesting to see how China responds to the confluence of headwinds it currently faces. TL;DR— China's box office is still depressed, but there's (some) reason to think Chinese theaters might see better fortunes in the coming months. Possibly.

Depending on how many cities can reopen theaters, both Batman and Fantastic Beasts could get a slight (slight!!) boost. I know that, should I get out of lockdown/should theaters reopen in time, one of my first priorities will be checking out Fantastic Beasts. With Jurassic World— 1) no content objectionable to China 2) its predecessors have done well 3) dinosaurs are universally beloved 4) like Fantastic Beasts and Minions: The Rise of Gru, Jurassic World realistically gets a slight political boost thanks to its prominent presence at Universal Studios Beijing (Jurassic World Adventure is a really excellent ride, by the way).

sometimes all I want in a movie is dinosaurs eating people Jurassic World Dominion can't get here soon enough, that trailer was amazing, bring on the carnage