At long last, the domestic box office appears to be returning to its former glories after movies like Fast & Furious 9, Black Widow, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Venom: Let There Be Carnage and No Time to Die scored healthy opening weekends, but China is where the real money is being made.
Godzilla vs. Kong brought in $188 million from the world’s biggest market for cinema, the ninth adventure for Dominic Toretto and the family cracked $200 million, while local productions Hi, Mom and The Battle at Lake Changjin both sailed past $600 million, and Hollywood is desperate for a piece of that action.
Daniel Craig’s swansong as James Bond and Denis Villenueve’s Dune are on the way, but Shang-Chi was denied a Chinese release, and a new report from the Wall Street Journal indicates that fellow Marvel Cinematic Universe effort Eternals is set to suffer a similar fate.
It’s all to do with comments made by director Chloé Zhao about the country of her birth back in 2013, which were deemed as disparaging to China when they resurfaced. As a result, any mention of Nomadland was scrubbed from local media, and it looks as though Eternals will also be rejected by the censorship board as a result.
