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"Avatar: The Way of Water" will be released in
China on the same day as its global release, the studio said on
its official Weibo account.
It becomes one of the few foreign films to get access to the
Chinese market in recent months, with others including the
latest film in the "Minions" franchise and Sony Pictures' "Where
the Crawdads Sing".
Foreign movies have long struggled to gain release dates in
mainland China due to strict quotas on the number of
internatinal films allowed to show and many are blocked due to
content Chinese regulators deem unseemly.
Hollywood blockbusters recently have had a particularly hard
time getting clearance to show in China. The six latest Marvel
movies did not make an appearance in China and earlier this
year, "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever" was also denied a China
release.
Increased scrutiny of Hollywood films has occurred in
conjunction with a rise in China's film studios making their own
versions of the high-octane blockbusters U.S. studios are known
for.
Chinese-made hits include the "Wolf Warrior" franchise and last
year's breakout success, "The Battle at Changjin Lake", have
proven popular with Chinese audiences keen to see more
Chinese-centric stories on the big screen.
That said, since Chinese movie ticket sales topped U.S. ticket
sales for the first time in 2020, the Chinese movie market has
been hit by tight COVID-19 curbs. Cinemas across the country are
frequently asked to suspend operation or cap audience numbers.
Especially as cases continue to grow, people in many cities
around the country are refraining from going to cinemas.
China's total box office take for this year has reached only
28.27 billion yuan ($4 billion) according to Chinese cinema data
app Dengta. It is a sharp fall from 2019's 64.15 billion yuan or
even last year's 47.04 billion.
(Reporting by Casey Hall and Sophie Yu; Editing by Tom Hogue and
Stephen Coates)
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