World Health Organisation team visits Wuhan food market as part of coronavirus investigation

No North American movie company is more closely linked to the Chinese film industry’s fortunes than Imax Corp. The Ontario-based giant-screen exhibitor has more than 700 Imax theaters in China — nearly half its global total of 1,500 — and the company has said it plans to add as many as 400 new theaters there over the next three years.

On Wednesday, Chinese New Year box office achieved yet another new milestone with grosses for the holiday period growing to an estimated RMB 7.78B ($1.2B). This beats the previous all-time high set during the comparable 2019 holiday (RMB 5.9B). China often outdoes itself, but the fact that 2021’s Lunar New Year frame came with Covid capacity restrictions makes the performance even more staggering.

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Refresh for latest…: Chinese moviegoers ushered in the Year of the Ox with the colossal three-day debut of Detective Chinatown 3 grossing an estimated RMB 2.56B ($397M). This tops Avengers: Endgame’s 2019 five-day China bow of RMB 2.22B to make DC3 not only the biggest opener in Chinese history, but also giving it bragging rights to the biggest opening weekend ever in a single market — overtaking Endgame’s North American launch of $357M from April 2019.

Rebecca Davis editorChina made history this weekend with record sales of nearly $775 million (RMB50 billion) within the first three days of the Chinese New Year holiday, led by an incredible $424 million (RMB2.74 billion) debut from “Detective Chinatown 3.”This marked the first time the country’s national box office has ever broken RMB1 billion ($155 million) a day for three consecutive days, a feat achieved despite caps on max theater capacity at 75% in most of the country and 50% in areas

Lunar New Year 2021 is today, February 12th. It’s called Lunar New Year because, as Oprah Magazine describes, “it marks the first new moon of the lunisolar calendars traditional to many East Asian countries.” 2021 is the Year of the Ox, according to the Chinese zodiac. Traditions vary depending on your family and culture.

Rebecca Davis editorThe world’s largest film market is living up to its title with world-record-setting sales.

Talk about pent-up demand. Detective Chinatown 3, which was originally scheduled to hit Chinese cinemas during the Lunar New Year period in 2020, has sprung out of the gate today with an astonishing Maoyan-estimated RMB 1.05B ($163M) to score the biggest opening-day gross ever of any movie in a single market.

A television broadcasting war has broken out between the UK and China. Just days after the UK revoked the broadcasting license of Chinese state-backed network CGTN, Beijing has today retaliated by banning BBC World News.

Rebecca Davis editorChina’s top broadcasting regulator said Thursday that it will ban BBC World News from the country, according to the official Xinhua news agency.The National Radio and TV Administration (NRTA) said that BBC World News was found to have “undermined China’s national interests and ethnic solidarity” because of its China-related reports that “went against the requirements that news reporting must be true and impartial,” Xinhua said.In its own statement, the NRTA wrote: “As the

Long-developing plans to engineer the sale of TikTok’s U.S. operations to a group of investors including Oracle and Walmart have been put on hold.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefMore than 80% of movie tickets in China are sold online or via mobile device, one of the world’s highest penetration rates.

Shares of KuaishouTechnology, China’s second-most popular short-form video app behind TikTok owner ByteDance, rocketed nearly 300 percent Friday in their debut on the Hong Kong stock exchange. Shortly after the opening bell, the stock was selling at more than HK$330, nearly triple the initial public offering list price of HK$115 and valuing the company at $179 billion.

Cinemas in Beijing were ordered Thursday to limit seating capacity to 50 percent during the upcoming Lunar New Year holiday. The decision adds to local industry worries that recent flareups of COVID-19 cases could dampen earnings during what is usually the biggest period for China’s box office by far.

direct to your inbox World Health Organisation (WHO) investigators have visited a research centre in the Chinese city of Wuhan that has been the subject of speculation about the origins of the coronavirus.The WHO team’s visit to the Wuhan Institute of Virology is a highlight of their mission to gather data and search for clues as to where the virus originated and how it spread.Reporters followed the team to the high security facility on Wednesday, but as with past visits, there was no direct