Chinese box office numbers way down after Marvel movie ban
China’s policy of disallowing Marvel movies to air in the country has contributed to a 36% decrease in their domestic box office numbers, according to a report from Deadline.
Before the Marvel ban, Avengers: Endgame generated a whopping $632 million in China. In 2020 and 2021, before the ban, the Chinese box office was the biggest in the world. The North American box office surpassed it in 2022.
The last Marvel movie to release in China was 2019’s Spider Man: Far From Home, which took in $199 million in China. Since then, all of Marvel’s pandemic-era releases like Thor: Love and Thunder, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness have been banned in China.
Why does China ban Marvel movies?
No one knows for sure why China decided to start banning everything, although it might have something to do with the first movie to be banned: Black Widow. That movie didn’t paint post-Communist Russia in the most flattering light, which may have ticked off the Chinese Communist Party.
Since then, the CCP has justified banning some Marvel movies on account of LGBTQ themes and ideas. This is the also reason they banned Pixar’s Lightyear, which featured a homosexual relationship between two of its main characters. In addition to their anti-gay stance, the CCP usually censors anything that is critical of their policies. For example, Shang-Chi star Simu Liu discussed the hardships his parents experienced in a communist society. This was enough to for China to block the film’s release.
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