China Indefinitely Halts Film and TV Production Nationwide As Virus Deaths Surpass SARS

FilmOne Entertainment, the Nigerian distributor and production company, has gone into production on the first movie to cash in on the $1 million film fund it launched with China’s Huahua Media and South Africa’s Empire Entertainment in December.

Apple Inc. is warning investors that it won’t meet its second-quarter financial guidance because the viral outbreak in China has cut production of iPhones.The Cupertino, California-based company said Monday that all of its iPhone manufacturing facilities are outside Hubei province, the epicenter of the outbreak, and all have been reopened.

By Anthony D'Alessandro

Age is just a number to Jackie Chan and Arnold Schwarzenegger as the long-in-the-tooth action heroes battle it out in a new trailer for their upcoming film “The Iron Mask”.

Jackie Chan and Arnold Schwarzenegger go head-to-head in the trailer for their new movie The Iron Mask!

The Hong Kong International Film Festival will be postponed from its scheduled date in March and early April. The decision was a response to the growing fear of the novel coronavirus which has spread from mainland China to reach more than 20 countries and territories so far.

With nearly all of China's 70,000 movie theaters still weeks — if not months — awayfrom reopening, many in the Beijing film industry have begun to hope for government bailouts as the only means of keeping their businesses afloat.The cinema sector, to be sure, is just one of many areas of the enormous Chinese economy that has been hard hit by the novel coronavirus pneumonia, now officially known as COVID-19.

Li Ruigang’s China Media Capital has raised $950 million for CMC Capital Partners III, its third U.S. dollar-denominated investment fund.

China's virus death toll rose by 89 on Sunday to 811, passing the number of fatalities in the 2002-03 SARS epidemic, but fewer new cases were reported in a possible sign its spread might be slowing as other nations stepped up efforts to block the disease.Also Sunday, South Korea reported a new case in a 73-year-old woman whose relatives visited Guangdong province in southern China.

Macau, the gambling and tourism enclave on China’s southern flank, has ordered the temporary closure of all its casinos. The move is a response to the spread of the deadly coronavirus.

Shares in China's leading film studios took an immediate dive Monday moments after the country's stock markets resumed trading after the long Chinese New Year holiday.

The giant film studio complex at Qingdao in Eastern China has halted all film and TV production in response to the novel coronavirus that has infected thousands in the country and claimed more than 360 lives.

By Nancy Tartaglione