After more than three years of control over Hollywood releases, China has ended its de facto ban on Marvel movies.
Indeed, feature films of superheroes Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania secured theatrical release dates, after a roughly 42-month hiatus that cost Disney hundreds of millions of dollars in ticket sales.
The films will be released in February, after the Lunar New Year, marking the first Marvel releases in the world’s second-largest film market since the blockbuster. Avengers: Endgame in 2019.
Foreign film releases are approved or denied by regulators at the China Film Administration (CFA), which is part of the Chinese Communist Party’s propaganda department. The CFA regularly blocks the release of foreign films to maintain censorship and protect the domestic film industry.
The readmission of the Marvel films comes as the United States and China work to mend their relationship and the Chinese government appears to want to ease its tough line on the private sector.
With The Guardian