The domestic box office may have only shown signs of life for the first time in a year a couple of weeks ago when Godzilla vs. Kong stomped into theaters and broke records, but the big screen industry in China has been on the road to recovery for a long time now. The highest-grossing movie of 2020 globally was historical war drama The Eight Hundred, and four of the Top 10 were Chinese films.
It’s been a very similar story so far this year as well, with comedy Hi, Mom having already hauled in a mammoth $821 million to become the biggest-earning movie ever helmed by a female director, while buddy sequel Detective Chinatown 3 has raked in $686 million. Compared to those numbers, Godzilla vs. Kong‘s $357 million and counting pales by comparison.
Hollywood will obviously be looking to the Chinese box office to generate some serious revenue this year as screens in the United States crawl towards reopening at full capacity, but a new report is claiming that Warner Bros. actively put a stop to Zack Snyder’s Justice League getting a cinematic release in the nation. The studio obviously want the whole SnyderVerse conversation to disappear, so it’s not as though they’d be in any rush to make it available to local audiences, especially when the running time halves the number of screenings, reducing any potential earnings by at least 50%.
The report goes on to say that Godzilla vs. Kong‘s performance in China is an embarrassment for WB, too, even though the MonsterVerse crossover made almost $170 million in two weeks, which is streets ahead of Justice League‘s total $106 million tally back in 2017. There’s also the severely limited number of foreign films allowed by the government, to consider, so it seems it’s a decision driven entirely by money rather than an attempt to spite or sabotage the SnyderVerse.
Published: Apr 12, 2021 11:47 am