It’s not a coincidence that of the ten highest-grossing movies released since the pandemic first took hold last year, seven of them made huge amounts of money in China.
Local blockbusters The Battle of Lake Changjin and Hi,Mom are the only pair of titles to have crossed $800 million globally since Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, while historical actioner The Eight Hundred was the top-earning title of 2020, with Detective Chinatown 3 reaching $686 million earlier this year.
No Time to Die, Fast & Furious 9 and Godzilla vs. Kong also made solid gains in Chinese theaters, which leaves Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Venom: Let There Be Carnage and Demon Slayer: Mugen Train as the only three of the Top 10 that didn’t get approved for a big screen rollout.
Marvel in general have been exiled, with Black Widow and Eternals also shut out, and a new report from The Hollywood Reporter offers that Spider-Man: No Way Home might end up following suit, which would be a crushing blow after Homecoming and Far From Home made $116 million and $199 million from China respectively.
Venom fared even better by bringing in $269 million back in 2018, so it’s both depriving audiences of movies they clearly want to see, and significantly hampering the bottom line for the studios involved.
