China recently set release dates for two summer films – Universal’s Jurassic World Dominion June 10 and big local language production Mozart From Space (by the director of the Detective Chinatown series) July 15.
That’s good news for the giant market’s reopening, said Imax CEO Rich Gelfond. But he doesn’t expect heightened scrutiny of Hollywood fare to subside anytime soon despite the Jurassic news.
China has declined to date many high-profile U.S. films with recent Marvel omissions perhaps the most glaring.At a media conference Q&A today, Gelfond called 2021 “a really funky year” for U.S.
films in China. The exec is especially interesting on that market given his company’s significant exposure there.First, “the Chinese had their own backlog of unreleased films so there weren’t going to let in a lot of Marvel films and other films,” he said Also, there was a “large, failed PVOD experience, where pristine copies went day-and-date globally.”“China is a high-piracy territory and people were not buying them on PVOD, they were getting them for free from torrent sites.
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