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China has been blocking Hollywood films for years



How James Cameron’s latest blockbuster film fares in one of the world’s most restricted movie markets could determine whether Hollywood’s roller-coaster 2022 closes with a bang or a whimper. But it could also help mend fences between China’s government and its citizens who recently protested the country’s zero-COVID lockdown policies.To get more news about new chinese movies, you can visit shine news official website.

Avatar: The Way of Water will hit theaters on Dec. 16, 13 years after the release of the original that went on to become the highest-grossing film of all time. To say the latest movie faces high expectations would be an understatement. The film’s huge budget means it will likely have to be one of the highest-grossing movies ever to recoup its costs, director James Cameron said in a recent interview with GQ.

The likelihood of Avatar: The Way of Water, from Disney, becoming a box office smash was boosted last month after the film received a coveted release in China, the world’s second-largest film market behind the U.S. It was a huge victory for the film’s studio, Disney, that could help its chances of becoming a financial success.

The overseas release of the original Avatar in 2009 and rereleased versions accounted for $2.13 billion of its $2.9 billion in total gross. Around $265 million of that came from China, where the film industry has grown quickly in the more than a decade since.On Wednesday, Cameron got more good news when China’s government said it would ease up COVID restrictions. Though many of the details are still unknown, such as the timing, it’s likely welcome news to fans of the original and, possibly, to protesters, too.

Amid waves of COVID-induced lockdowns in China, film fans have increasingly clamored for greater “cinema freedom.” Protesters have shared the rallying cry, “I wanna see a movie!,” across Chinese social media, as part of their effort to return to normal life.
Avatar: The Way of Water’s production budget alone reportedly stands at $250 million. But with marketing and other expenses, the film’s price tag may be more than $350 million, according to the Hollywood Reporter, which would place it among the most expensive films ever.

Even Cameron, who has ample experience helming expensive big-budget flicks from Terminator 2 to Titanic, is nervous about how much the film must make to avoid a loss, calling the film the “worst business case in movie history” during his recent GQ interview. For Avatar: The Way of Water to turn a profit, it would have to be “the third or fourth highest-grossing film in history,” he said. “That’s your threshold. That’s your breakeven.”

Cameron refused to discuss reports of how much the movie had cost, saying only that it had been expensive. But to become the third or fourth highest-grossing film of all time, the Avatar sequel would need to make more than 2015’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which raked in $2.07 billion worldwide.

If it doesn’t, two of the film’s three planned sequels will likely be canned, and the movie industry’s uneven rebound from the pandemic in 2022 will end on a low note.

“Theater owners have been waiting for their lobbies to be packed with people and bustling with activity, and that’s what a movie like Avatar: The Way of Water can do,” Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at Comscore, told Fortune. “The stakes are really high.”

He described cinema’s 2022 as a “breakneck roller-coaster ride” that was atypical for the industry. After high-profile films including The Batman and Top Gun: Maverick dominated the box office with big sales earlier in the year, interest in more recent films has been relatively subdued, according to Dergarabedian.