According to relevant media statistics, Hollywood’s box office performance in China continues to be sluggish.
As of July 31, the income of imported Hollywood films was only 700 million U.S. dollars.
This is a decrease of 66% compared with the same period in 2019 (US$2.1 billion), and a decrease of 61% compared with the same period in 2018 (US$1.8 billion).
And Chinese domestic films performed well during the epidemic.
The box office of “Hi, Mom” at the beginning of the year was $821 million, and the recent “Chinese Doctors” received $197 million.
As of the end of July, the box office of domestically produced movies in Mainland China totaled US$3.9 billion, which was higher than the box office of US$3.8 billion in 2018 and US$2.9 billion in 2019.
However, due to the absence of many imported Hollywood films, the total box office of movies in mainland China in the first seven months was lower than that of the same period in 2019, from 5.5 billion US dollars to 4.7 billion US dollars.
Analysts said that the biggest problem is the lack of imported films.
Due to the impact of the epidemic in the first half of the year, few Hollywood movies were released globally.
In addition, this year, the control of China’s film regulators is stricter than before.
So far, only 13 Hollywood split-share films have been released in mainland China, down from 22 in the same period in 2019 and 26 in 2018.
The most recent Hollywood film released in China was “Peter Rabbit 2” on June 11 (at a box office of 30.7 million US dollars).
Then there is “Luca” which will be released this Friday.
Blockbuster films such as “Black Widow“, “Jungle Cruise“, “FREE GUY“, “Space Jam: A New Legacy“, “The Suicide Squad”, and “Shang-Chi” which will be released in September, currently have no plans to be released in China.
Before this, Disney has been the most successful Hollywood studio in China.
Now we have to work hard to get the remaining two MCU movies this year into mainland China.
Zhao Ting, the director of “Eternals”, caused controversy on the public platform due to an interview many years ago.
“Shang-Chi” has also been resisted because of the character Fu Manchu in the original comics, criticized as the racist incarnation of Yellow Peril’s stereotype.
Stanley Rosen, a professor at the University of Southern California who specializes in the Chinese film industry, said, “National sentiments are becoming more and more vulnerable in China. As long as Hollywood makes a film involving Chinese culture, it will become a minefield.”
He added, “Of course no one has watched “Shang-Chi” yet, but Chinese audiences have felt that Hollywood is telling them:’We know better than you how to make a superhero movie about Chinese culture.’ Conflict This resulted.”
