porginchina

Maoyan numbers are similar. Secrets of Dumbledore in second place narrowly above Bad Guys.

Welp, scanned through Weibo more carefully and plenty of people accusing Marvel of scorning China, but the topic doesn't seem to be trending strongly (besides, nationalistic China trolls are always going to nationalistic China troll). Some damage control is definitely required. Anyway… returning more to the topic of Chinese box office figures, looks like May Day is going to be awful this year.

Even movies that don't play in theaters are absurdly easy to find on the Chinese Internet— a quick Baidu search and you've got a nice, high-quality stream complete with fan-generated subtitles (once the movie's available on Western streaming platforms). For instance, I saw Shang-Chi the way the Chinese government wanted me to see it, on a sketchy Chinese website with pop-up ads for online gambling and adult websites. Also, VPNs are a thing and many Chinese people use them. Oh, and one final point— "[t]hey were all hating" is a bit strong. Chinese people are NOT a monolith; saying that "all Chinese people" hold any opinion would be precisely as correct as saying "all Americans think XYZ" (which is to say, not in the slightest).

I wouldn't describe myself as an MCU fan (I'm totally indifferent about seeing Multiverse of Madness in a theater), but I happen to live in China and am fascinated by China's interaction with the outside world— and I want to hope that China will become an increasingly open and tolerant country and that cultural exchange between China and the West can continue to grow, through venues such as movies and popular culture. Basically, I'm not approaching this topic from a standpoint of wanting this franchise or that franchise to gross more money; quite frankly, I couldn't care less. I'm approaching this topic from a more academic China studies perspective, if that makes sense.

Yeah. It would have taken a matter of minutes for somebody to switch the text on the newspaper stand out to something like 人民日报 (People's Daily) and then crisis averted. At least this truly does seem like an innocent mistake on Marvel's behalf; I browsed through Weibo earlier today and most of the comments I scanned through were wondering why Marvel was so careless, not condemning Marvel for China hate. Anyhow, if the NBA managed to be forgiven by Beijing, I have confidence that Marvel will eventually figure out a similar feat.

So a slightly deeper dive into why Multiverse of Madness has been denied permission to screen in China… Let's start with this clip from the Gargantos battle in NYC: At about 0:25 you can clearly read 大纪元时报 (although the writing in the footage uses traditional characters, not simplified like I've typed here), the English name for the Epoch Times, a Falun Gong-affiliated newspaper with a reputation for vehemently opposing the CCP and spreading conspiracy theories (according to Wikipedia, they've been banned from advertising by Facebook multiple times— https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Epoch_Times). As far as groups the CCP absolutely cannot abide, Falun Gong ranks very high towards the top; you can't release a movie in the mainland referencing them or seeming to promote a Falun Gong-affiliated group, even in the background of a shot. Inspecting the clip more closely, looks like the newspaper kiosk just happened to be in the area when they shot in NYC (or else it was something the prop department found easy to source). Jumping into the realm of speculation, it's likely that practically nobody on the production can read Chinese or has a strong sense of Chinese politics, the inclusion went unremarked upon. To the untrained Western eye (and to me before I embarked upon this research), one Chinese-language newspaper is the same as any other Chinese-language newspaper, right? Alas, but no. Which is really too bad for Marvel, as it would be incredibly easy to switch things up after the fact in post-production with absolutely nobody being the wiser. I'll maintain that this seems like a situation where Marvel Studios can/should post some sort of apology onto their Weibo account.

Near-lock for releasing in China. Illumination is pretty reliable for getting Chinese release slots and Universal's been doing pretty well this year in getting their movies approved. Question is when it'll release since July is typically not an allowed zone for foreign productions. Could release in June, could release in September.

Looks like financing from Tencent was about as helpful for Top Gun Maverick as it was for Venom: Let There Be Carnage. Guessing regulators didn't feel like letting a movie so fond of the US military show on Chinese screens. At least Jurassic World Dominion has already received permission to screen (no release date yet, though).

I completely agree with this point! Mulan was an absolutely embarrassing debacle; I can remember watching it in a Shanghai theater, sitting through the credits, and being astonished at how few Chinese producers and writers were credited on the production (basically none, I think). Situations like Mulan are remarkable for how apparent they make Hollywood's cultural arrogance. All too often in the US/the West, there's a tendency to think of China as little more than a source of revenue (albeit a politically problematic income source), ignoring the cultural complexity of the country and its people. TBH, I was totally guilty of that for a long time before I moved to China myself.

When you're spending $200 million-plus on a movie, it really shouldn't cost that much money to hire a Chinese speaker to consult and make sure you haven't missed anything painfully obvious that'll cause anger in Beijing and jeopardize some of your company's most important business interests. Disney has plenty of employees in the mainland, as well as HK/Taiwan (not to mention employees who come from Chinese families). Hopefully this situation is resolved somewhat peaceably. But there are things that Beijing is really clear you can't touch in a movie if you want to play in China, and, well…

One note with China is that marketing costs in China are way, way lower than most other territories, so the 25% of the ticket sales can constitute comparable revenue off of similar grosses in other territories. It's still significant money, in other words.

Yeah, 100%. Even with Fantastic Beasts trimming six seconds, the state-sponsored tabloid Global Times posted an article quoting Chinese netizens being sad about not hearing the removed dialogue. China's not nearly as strict with LGBTQ content as countries like Singapore, Russia, Saudi. With that said, how in the hell did Disney/Marvel miss that placement?? When you're budgeting for movies with the expectation that you'll earn money from China, due your damn due diligence. This is super black-and-white. Don't promote Falun Gong in your movie. Just don't.

Ah, but now we can start speculating about Thor: Love and Thunder's mainland chances! Seriously, though, I don't think MoM would've made that much in China right now even with a release… with the way COVID is tearing through the country now, locking down cities left and right, maybe $75 million at a wildly optimistic extreme? Living in China, I am a bit disappointed that I have no chance of seeing the Avatar: The Way of Water trailer on the big screen (then again, I'm in lockdown in Shanghai, so I'm not seeing anything on the big screen). Indifferent about not seeing Doctor Strange, though, as I'm skeptical about Multiverse of Madness' potential to be a particularly good movie… so much plot, so many characters, so little breathing room.

Yeah, even as an American, I tend to think they should apologize. With Chloe Zhao, it didn't make sense to apologize since a) her comments weren't unearthed until Eternals was in post-production b) apologizing for her presence would alienate so much of the Hollywood creative community. There's also a difference apologizing for a person attached to a movie and apologizing for something that snuck into the movie itself. The inclusion of the newspaper stand in Multiverse of Madness is most likely a production error and a mistake; while somewhat unbelievable that they didn't catch it, there's at least some room to maneuver in an apologize (and yeah, Chinese audiences would be able to read that text really easily… I'm not a native speaker and the text is clearly in frame/large enough/long enough that I could read it). Business-wise, Disney/Marvel still have enough mainland connections that they'll want to get ahead of this (or at least, I would hope so). Even if the movies don't release in theaters, there's plenty of Marvel merchandise and clothing for sale in the mainland, as well as some presence at Shanghai Disneyland (although I'd expect the Marvel presence at the park to get scaled down if Marvel/the government can't patch things up soon). Might even be worth trying to reach out to Iger; current Disney administration is clearly not skilled with the Chinese. Multiverse of Madness is thoroughly doomed, and this slip-up is bad enough that I've lost all hope for Love and Thunder (Wakanda Forever might be slightly more plausible but even then… my expectations are low). I still don't think Marvel is permanently gone from China, but… this is bad.

Worth noting that a lot of things in China are extremely contextual, especially as it pertains to movie censorship (i.e., graphic/gory violence is more okay in a war movie fighting the Japanese than in other contexts; earlier Harry Potter movies were banned from playing in Chinese theaters but now there's a Harry Potter theme park land in Beijing itself). The CCP is not a monolithic entity; there are factions within the Party that have ideological conflicts. Of course, things have gotten much more rigid under Xi and 2022 is going to be an exceptionally rigid year with the big Party conference in October/November to re-elect Xi as leader.

As we wait to see the fallout of this latest Marvel blunder (how you could miss something like this I honestly have no idea, wtf… including Falun Gong imagery in a movie's bound to add at least a year of unofficial banning, that's so bad), some positive-ish news is that the COVID-19 situation appears to possibly be getting better? Looking at this write-up of IMAX's latest earnings report (https://deadline.com/2022/04/imax-earnings-avatar-1235012439/), the company seems to expect Shanghai theaters to be back in action "in a few weeks" and the situation to be under control by the end of May. As I'm currently locked up in Shanghai… that seems overly optimistic. Community spread does appear to be significantly down (most of the city reported no new cases outside of high-risk areas yesterday, which is huge), but it'll realistically be at least two weeks after achieving zero community spread before businesses like movie theaters are back online. Still some hope for Jurassic World Dominion, though. [[Side note— looks like Shanghai's setting up hundreds and hundreds of nucleic acid testing kiosks to help manage life after the lockdown ends. If China can test quickly and accurately and on a wide level, they might have a chance of bringing the country back to functionality by summer. At the very least, the central government's absolutely freaked out by the economic havoc the country's facing right now and they're going to do their absolute best to bring life back online, at least mostly, especially since 2022's a politically sensitive year for Xi]]

I can't see this being negotiable. You don't mess with cults and expect the Chinese government to be the slightest bit forgiving or tolerant. They're super sensitive on that subject.

Looks like most of the new cases are in Jilin province, which seems to have badly mishandled this latest outbreak… as long as the Chinese can clamp down on the spread of the virus, there's still hope (Jilin isn't a major box office player). Shenzhen's numbers seem relatively reasonable given their aggressive lockdown/mass testing strategy. Shanghai… well, hopefully we start getting our numbers down in the next week or so. Right now, a majority of China's theaters remain open; the question is how much more gets shut down. Hopefully the mainland can squash this wave and start preparing for the inevitable spread of omicron without totally overwhelming the health system.

The next week/week and a half will be key for determining whether China manages to contain this wave or whether the country gets thoroughly overwhelmed. The political cost of omicron getting out and tearing through the Chinese population would be unfathomable and the loss of life would be staggering… China is densely populated and has a massive elderly population and a ton of smokers… basically, the perfect recipe for disaster with a respiratory illness. So far, they're heading back to the same well of tricks (Shanghai's in an unofficial partial lockdown; Changchun and Jilin in northern China are in full lockdown; megacity Shenzhen entered a week of full lockdown today; and that's just listing some of the more high-profile locations). With China's enthusiasm for mass testing and contact tracing and shutting things down to stop spread, think there's still at least some cause for hope. Really hoping that this gets contained quickly and with a minimum of fuss… looking forward to being able to return to a movie theater when this wave is over. And, no, Covid-zero isn't sustainable forever; official rhetoric is slowly turning in a direction where the country might move away from the policy in the quasi-foreseeable future. Given China's unique vulnerabilities to Covid-19 (and the lack of immunity in the population), it'll take time. Hopefully sooner rather than later. Anyhow, speaking of box office… looks like the weekend box office is in the low 120 million RMB range (~$19 million USD); in other words, not good. March 2022 box office to date is just over 500 million RMB (under $80 million) across almost two weeks.

According to a post on Maoyan, 60 cities have shut their cinemas for a total of 1944 movie theaters, representing 16.4% of China's movie theaters and 15.9% of China's box office. This as of 15ish minutes ago… the situation is extremely fluid and could change; COVID-zero has been remarkably effective thus far in terms of keeping China's deaths astonishingly low and keeping pressure off the hospital systems, but Omicron is tearing through the country impressively quickly. Here in Shanghai, tons of apartment complexes have been cordoned off; the general mood in the city is not the greatest.

More cases, basically. Way more cases. Closing cinemas is part of the standard dynamic zero-COVID handbook, but we normally don't talk about the impact too much as the cities affected aren't the super important cities. This outbreak is comparatively much more widespread and includes notable first-tier cities like Shanghai and Shenzhen, as opposed to the more typical mix of tier-two cities (Qingdao's been hit a few times, including this current flare-up, Hangzhou's had a few flare-ups). From a Shanghai perspective (as I'm Shanghai-based), March 2022 is setting records for COVID-19 cases (yesterday's reported tally was 5 symptomatic cases and 78 asymptomatic… might not seem like much in a city of ~25 million, but comparatively huge). Right now the priority is to completely squash the spread of the virus. Travel in and out of Shanghai is being restricted via the magic of the 行程吗 (travel health code), many entertainment venues are shut (hence the lack of cinemas), school has gone remote, tons of offices have switched to work from home. The city's making progress, but until the new cases trickle down to zero, life will be dicey. And even after new cases are shut down, it'll likely be another two weeks before things return to normal. So… from a box office perspective, maybe The Batman will play in Shanghai, maybe not, it's unclear at this point in time.

Shanghai movie theaters are now temporarily closed due to the surge in COVID-19 cases (along with other entertainment venues like KTV, museums, etc.)… Shanghai Disneyland remains open, though.

One possible source of box office danger for Uncharted and The Batman is that China's grappling with a fresh wave of COVID-19 cases. In Shanghai where I'm based, the March 2022 case tally is higher than the case tally at the beginning of the pandemic; granted, all the cases have been reported as either showing minor symptoms or no symptoms at all, and the vast majority of recent cases are people who were already quarantined due to being close contacts. Still, people are spooked. Life is kinda normal, but some entertainment businesses have shut down for the time being (including movie theaters in Xuhui and Jing'an, two of the city's more central districts). Other cities have been hit fairly bad as well, including tier two Qingdao and Jilin in the northeast, tier two Hangzhou a brief bullet train ride from Shanghai, and tier one Shenzhen across the border from Hong Kong. One common strategy to curbing infections is shutting things down, with full lockdown being a distressingly popular strategy in many cities that aren't Shanghai.

Christmas seems like a great time to release a family-friendly musical fantasy with plenty of wintry scenes (and with Paul King behind the camera, I'm assuming that Wonka will be super charming and delightful). The only issue with a Christmas 2023 release date for Wonka I can see is that if, by some miracle, Universal manages to actually get Wicked in front of cameras by summer 2022, then Christmas 2023 would be a very logical release window for that movie (and between Wicked and Wonka, well, it's not really much of a theoretical competition).

For Uncharted, pretty sure it's soft sabotage. For Hotel Transylvania, it's actually a beneficial opening day, hitting just in time for the start of Qingming Festival (tomb-sweeping holiday, everybody gets days off work).