It hasn’t been confirmed or denied as of yet, but with the Marvel Cinematic Universe having recently been welcomed back into Chinese theaters following a three-year exile, there’s a distinct chance the studio will position The Marvels for a wide release as we get closer to November.
To be brutally honest, though, the franchise’s popularity has taken a kicking in what used to be one of its strongest overseas markets up until the onset of the pandemic, with Sony’s Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse ironically the most successful Marvel Comics adaptation to hit China in years, while Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania bombed particularly hard.
However, there’s already a growing belief that Brie Larson’s second solo outing will either need to be edited to gain approval from the local authorities or be kept out of China completely, and it’s all to do with a familiar landmark that factored heavily into Spider-Man: No Way Home.
As glimpsed in the recently-released trailer, The Marvels showcases New York City’s Statue of Liberty in its current MCU-approved guise, but China doesn’t have much fondness for iconic structures intrinsically linked to other nations’ patriotism being given prominent positioning in feature films for whatever reason.
Of course, releasing No Way Home would have been impossible given that the Statue of Liberty is quite literally the location of the climactic third act showdown, but depending on how heavily it plays into The Marvels as a whole, it could be a case of simply excising a few seconds of footage for the sole purpose of trying to draw in some additional revenue from a market that saw Captain Marvel bring in a mighty $154 million.
