‘The Bad Guys’ Holds China Box Office Lead in Further COVID-Hit Weekend

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefTang Wei, the Chinese star of Korean film “Decision to Leave,” says she told director Park Chan-wook that he’d made her life complete after seeing the finished version of the film at its Cannes Film Festival gala premiere.The film played in competition this week in Cannes. She revealed her confession on Tuesday at a press event, accompanied by Park, cast member Park Hae-il and scriptwriter Chung Soo-kyung.Switching between Chinese and English, Tang Wei said: “This in not the first time I’ve worked with a Korean director.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefCinema box office this year in North America is poised to overtake theatrical revenues in China, the country that has been the world’s largest movie market for the past two years.Before the latest weekend, gross revenues in the year to date stood at $2.38 billion for the North American compared with $2.43 billion for China, according to data from ComScore.U.K.-based research firm Gower Street Analytics forecast that the North American figure would overtake China’s revenues over the weekend or early this week. That reflects business growth in North America and the current reversal in China, where anti-COVID measures are causing renewed cinema closures.Gower Street says that some 85% of global cinemas are now open for business, compared with pre-pandemic levels.

Refresh for latest…: Disney/Marvel’s Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness crossed $800M globally this weekend, now with $803.2M after three frames. Of that $342.1M is from domestic and $461.1M from the international box office. The offshore drop was 53% with $40M from 49 markets.

This means that the MCU now has the top two highest totals for any Hollywood film since theaters reopened, as “Doctor Strange 2” is now only second to the $1.89 billion total of “Spider-Man: No Way Home.” It should also pass the totals of last year’s Chinese blockbuster hits “Hi, Mom” ($822 million) and “The Battle at Lake Changjin” ($902 million) in the coming weeks. Meanwhile, Focus Features’ “Downton Abbey: A New Era” has opened to $16 million from 3,820 theaters — a record screen count for Universal’s specialty wing — and earned a global opening of $51.7 million.

Christopher Vourlias Riding the high of a production-servicing boom, Estonia’s domestic industry has likewise shown no signs of slowing down. Here’s a roundup of top local productions in the pipeline, from producers who are searching for international partners in Cannes:The Invisible Fight Director: Rainer Sarnet Producers: Katrin Kissa, Homeless Bob Production (Estonia), Alise Gelze, White Picture (Latvia), Amanda Livanou, Neda Film (Greece), Helen Vinogradov, Helsinki-filmi (Finland) Sarnet, whose fantasy-drama “November” played at Tribeca in 2017, returns with a ‘70s-set kung-fu comedy about a guard on the Soviet-Chinese border who, after surviving a deadly attack, decides to become a monk but must continually prove along the way that he’s capable of becoming the enlightened man he set out to be.

Mike Fazioli If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Variety may receive an affiliate commission. When’s the best time to buy a new TV? If you guessed huge deals events like Black Friday and Cyber Monday, you’re right. But there’s a third less-ballyhooed prime TV-buying season, and it’s right now.New TVs are usually released in spring, and that makes the prior models they are replacing prime targets for big-time discounts.

The 2022 Cannes Film Festival opened amid concerns around journalistic independence. Now there are concerns regarding jury independence.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefThe question arising at every Cannes Film Festival lineup announcement about why the festival has not selected films from a particular country tends to irk chief selector Thierry Frémaux. But this year, with films from China notable by their absence, Frémaux may be asking himself if he messed up, or whether bigger forces are at play?Last year, Cannes was at pains to conceal its selection of Hong Kong pro-democracy film “Revolution of Our Times” until as late as possible, in order not to alert mainland Chinese authorities or disrupt the other Chinese indies showing in the festival.China experts differ as to how much Cannes’ defiance last year was a factor in this year’s de facto boycott.

ESPN is reporting that the NBA playoffs are back for China’s TV viewers after a long banishment over controvesial political statements by an executive.

The dinosaurs are ready to stomp into China with a June 10 date confirmed for Universal’s Jurassic World Dominion. This will be in step with the North American release — a rarity of late — after international rollout begins a few days prior. Universal confirmed the China release date on its official Weibo account with a video from stars Bryce Dallas Howard and Chris Pratt. Check out some new posters below.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefHong Kong-based sales firm Golden Network has picked up international rights to Jackie Chan’s upcoming film “Ride On.”The feature has recently wrapped production and is scheduled to be released on Dec. 31 in time for what is normally a peak cinemagoing period in China and elsewhere.Asian films are currently struggling to achieve pre-sales in international markets, but “Ride On” could be an exception.

Everything Everywhere All At Once.The martial arts legend was originally envisioned by directors and writers Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan as playing the movie’s lead role. However, when he said he was unavailable, they rewrote the part for Yeoh.“Jackie actually texted me,” she told the Guardian about his response to the film.

Refresh for latest…: Disney/Marvel’s Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness is approaching $700M globally after two weekends. The worldwide cume through Sunday is now an estimated $688.1M, including $291.9M domestic and $396.2M from the international box office. The latter number will shortly pass The Batman to become the biggest overseas release of 2022.

“Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” stayed on top of the box office charts during its second weekend in theaters, earning an additional $61 million from North American theaters, according to studio estimates on Sunday.With $688 million in global grosses, it’s already one of the highest grossing films of the pandemic and the second biggest of 2022. But a 67% fall is also a steep drop — even for reliably frontloaded superhero films.

Rolling Stone, in the early days of his presidency, Trump repeatedly asked his national security aides if China had a weapon that could create large, man-made hurricanes, and was using it to deliberately target the United States. According to one Trump official, “It was almost too stupid for words” — and Meyers largely agreed.“This was at the beginning of his presidency, and somehow his presidency still had a middle and an end,” Meyers marveled.But what hit Meyers the most wasn’t the idea of the hurricane gun itself; it was that Trump apparently took that as a forgone conclusion and had a series of steps he wanted to take in response.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefCinema box office in China fell back to the lower depths over the weekend, with just $8.9 million of revenue across a country of 1.3 billion inhabitants.Business continues to be badly hit by COVID-related closures as the disease shows signs of spread around the country, while slowly diminishing in Shanghai where there was a full lockdown that lasted many weeks.Business appeared to spike upwards a week earlier, driven by the May Day holiday. But Chinese state media reports that the Sunday to Wednesday May day period was down 82% compared with last year.The latest weekend box office total (Friday to Sunday) was the second lowest this year.