LGBTQ+ Characters & Storylines Disappear From ‘Friends’ In China

Brent Lang Executive Editor of Film and MediaCharles Rivkin has an enviable view.From his desk in the Motion Picture Assn. offices, Rivkin can look out at the White House, a reminder of the proximity to power that comes with being Hollywood’s main lobbyist.

Roland Emmerich’s big-budget sci-fi disaster pic Moonfall has been set for a March 25 release in China (check out the new poster below). The movie, which released via Lionsgate domestically on February 4, is heavily backed by China’s Huayi, so this is an important piece of its recoupment prospects. The China date falls one week after the PRC start of Warner Bros/DC’s The Batman.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefHollywood franchise movies “Hotel Transylvania: Transformania” and “Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore” have both secured April theatrical release dates in mainland China.“Transylvania” will open in Chinese cinemas on Sunday April 3, 2022, a couple of days ahead of the Qingming or Tomb Sweeping holiday on April 5. “Beasts” will open, more conventionally, on Friday, April 8.Sony missed out on a China release for “Spider Man: No Way Home,” which was the biggest film worldwide in 2021. But the confirmation represents the studio’s second Hollywood film this year to receive approval from the Chinese authorities (after “Uncharted,” set for March 14 ).

Sony Pictures Animation’s Hotel Transylvania: Transformania has been granted an April 3 theatrical release date in China. Sony last summer licensed the fourth installment in the successful franchise to Amazon worldwide, but retained China rights.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief‘The Battle at Lake Changjin II’ headed the mainland Chinese box office for the fifth successive weekend as cinemas await significant new content. “Changjin II” earned $7.5 million over the latest weekend, according to data from consultancy Artisan Gateway. The increment expanded the film’s aggregate to $626 million since release on Feb.

The U.S. is not the only country with growing income inequality. The same is true of China, a phenomenon explored in the Oscar-nominated feature documentary Ascension, from MTV Documentary Films.

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 Chief“Kanaa,” an Indian-produced film from 2018 which tells the story of an aspiring woman cricketer and delves into issues of race and gender equality, will get a theatrical release in mainland China on March 18, 2022, according to Chinese state media. It is only the second Tamil-language film to be released in China in recent years, after “2.0” in 2019.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefThe box office domination by patriotic local film “The Battle at Lake Changjin II” ground on into a fourth weekend in China. Hollywood’s “Death on the Nile” slipped out of the top five on its second weekend of release.“The Battle at Lake Changjin II” earned $11.0 million, according to data from consultancy Artisan Gateway. That lifted its cumulative to $611 million since release on Feb.

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.”

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. 

The approval is a big boost to Warner’s box office hopes, as it will be the first comic book movie since “Wonder Woman 1984” to get a release in China and the first major American import after the Lunar New Year period, which is reserved for Chinese films only. Warner Bros.

The return of popular American sitcom Friends to streaming services in China has provoked a significant online backlash after viewers noted numerous changes that had been made to the show, including the removal of LGBTQ references.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief“The Battle at Lake Changjin II” passed $500 million in total sales and remained unchallenged atop the mainland Chinese box office over the latest weekend.Data from consultancy Artisan Gateway showed no positional change among the top five films on a weekend that came a week after the Chinese New Year holiday wound down. Bona’s “Lake Changjin II” earned $43.5 million over the Friday to Sunday weekend, ahead of comedy “Too Cool to Kill” with $37.3 million over the same three days. In third place over the weekend was drama “Nice View” with $21.6 million and animation “Boonie Bears: Back to Earth” with $14.0 million.