‘Friends’ Censorship In China Sparks Online Backlash

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Disney has done the frozen Nordic princess, the Chinese warrior princess and many others in between.

China has cleared Warner Bros’ Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets Of Dumbledore for release in the market, though a date is still to be set. The WB Weibo account posted today that “magic is coming” and said, “stay tuned.” This is the third film from the studio this year to be granted access, following The Matrix Resurrections which opened in January and The Batman which is due on March 18. After a reduced number of Hollywood movies getting into the market across 2021, whether this is a trend that will continue remains a question mark.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefAcclaimed Japanese animated film “Poupelle of Chimney Town” will release in North American home entertainment markets from May.The rights in the U.S. and Canada are controlled by Eleven Arts which has appointed Shout! Factory to handle distribution.

Partner Content The ongoing pandemic has inevitably changed the workings of the global film industry in a variety of ways. Throughout these ups and downs, one thing has yet to waver, and that’s the demand for new content.

Wall Street Journal reporter Erich Schwartzel’s book, Red Carpet: Hollywood, China and the Global Battle for Cultural Supremacy, warns in its prologue: “China’s pressure on Hollywood and its own entertainment industry have the potential to challenge the American film industry as the chief narrator of the twenty-first century.”

Editor’s Note: Wall Street Journal reporter Erich Schwartzel’s new book Red Carpet: Hollywood, China and the Global Battle for Cultural Supremacy includes a chapter on Fan Bingbing, one of China’s biggest global stars who disappeared from public view in 2018 shortly after she was cast to star in the female action spy movie The 355. In the excerpt below from the Penguin Press book, Schwartzel takes readers from Cannes through Fan’s house arrest — where she was “watched constantly, even while taking showers” — to her eventual reappearance (albeit via greenscreen and with a body double for The 355) as she had become what Schwartzel calls “the most famous chicken used by Chinese authorities to scare the monkeys of its entertainment industry.”

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media ReporterSony executives breathed a sigh of relief when “Uncharted,” a big-budget adaptation of the popular video game, secured a release date in China.The Chinese government, which has absolute control over which movies play in its theaters (and when they debut), has recently been ultra-selective about the non-Chinese films it allows to screen in the country’s tens of thousands of venues. As a result, many of Hollywood’s biggest pandemic-era releases, such as “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” and “Eternals,” weren’t granted access to Chinese movie theaters.

LeBron James’ reaction to Macy Gray’s national anthem performance had everybody talking on Twitter Sunday.

< 1 min read Multiple episodes of the hit television series Friends have been removed or censored by Chinese streaming services due to LGBTQ+ characters and storylines.

Bill Maher zeroed in on China during the latest edition of “Real Time”, targeting the winter Olympics in Beijing during the “New Rules” segment.

Bill Maher couldn’t hide his contempt for the country hosting the Winter Olympics on his Friday Real Time. 

original ending of “Fight Club” has been restored on Chinese streamer Tencent Video, director David Fincher is still baffled as to why it was ever changed in the first place.“A company licensed the film from New Regency to show it in China, with a boilerplate [contract]: ‘You have to understand cuts may be made for censorship purposes,'” the director explained in a recent interview with Empire. “No one said, ‘If we don’t like the ending, can we change it?’ So there’s now a discussion being had as to what ‘trims’ means.”Fincher added that it wasn’t so much the trims themselves that bothered him, but why they were made.

A couple of weeks ago, it was revealed that “Fight Club” was added to a Chinese streaming platform recently, but with a brand-new ending. Instead of the ending where buildings are blown up and Project Mayhem wins the day, a new, more government-friendly ending was added, where the film shows a title card explaining how the bad guys lost.

Zack Sharf David Fincher has finally weighed in on China’s “Fight Club” censorship. As reported by Variety last month, Fincher’s “Fight Club” was uploaded to Tencent Video, China’s largest video streamer, with an entirely new ending that was the exact opposite of the director’s finale.

Chinese fans of the hit comedy series are calling out the censorship of multiple episodes, specifically ones featuring LGBTQ content.

China’s streaming services have deliberately censored multiple “Friends” episodes due to LGBTQ characters and storylines.

The New York Times is being taken to the woodshed on social media for using the term “overrepresented” in an article on Asians in figure skating.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefTrinity Cine Asia has acquired rights to mainland Chinese blockbuster “The Battle at Lake Changjin II” for release in the U.K. and Ireland. The deal was struck with sales agency Distribution Workshop.

Nathan Chen has won Olympic gold!