Zhang Yimou: Last News

The opening ceremony of the 2022 Winter Olympics is just getting under way in Beijing. Overseeing the event is filmmaker Zhang Yimou, back after directing the 2008 Summer Games opener to global acclaim. This time around, Zhang has said the ceremony will have a romantic tone that he hopes will “amaze the whole world.”

After being forced to sit out the annually lucrative Chinese New Year period as the Covid crisis was just beginning in 2020, Chinese box office blasted to an all-time high during the comparable 2021 session. This week, the Year of the Tiger will be ushered in beginning February 1 with eight movies poised to potentially set new records. Projections are in the RMB 7B-8B+ range ($1.1B-$1.26B). Last year in the world’s biggest box office market, the week-long holiday reached RMB 7.8B ($1.2B at historical rates).

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefChina Media Group has launched CCTV-8K, an 8K ultra-high-definition TV channel, to broadcast the upcoming 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, state-owned news agency Xinhua reports.To deliver the channel, CMG had to accelerate development of its nascent 8K production, broadcasting and transmission operations, said the Asian Broadcasting Union.CMG has started to install giant 8K screens in public places across the country, starting with four railway stations in Beijing and Olympic venue Zhangjiakou.Other media novelties this year include Kuaishou, a short video and live-streaming platform, being set as an official broadcast partner. Kuaishou claims more than a billion downloads of its app and to be catching fierce rival Bytedance (which owns both TikTok and its Chinese equivalent Douyin.) Along with streaming platform Tencent Video, Kuaishou sub-licensed the China rights to last year’s Tokyo summer games and the 2022 Beijing Olympics from China Central Television.The games are set to go ahead in an ultra-strict anti-COVID bubble.