Marvel’s reign in Hollywood in recent years is indisputable, but that does not mean that Phase 4 of its superhero universe has been the most criticized by far. We’ll see if that changes with Phase 5, but what does the study has managed to solve is one of its biggest problems since the release of ‘Avengers: Endgame’.
Marvel returns to China
Of course, the problem in question has nothing to do with the artistic and refers to the fact that Marvel had been unable to release any of its films in China for more than three yearsone of the most powerful markets, but that has just changed: ‘Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’ will be released in that country on February 7 and on the 17th of the same month ‘Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania’.
I imagine that There will be those who do not care too much about this news, but surely Marvel does not think the same. And it is necessary to take into account that ‘Avengers: Endgame’ raised 632 million dollars in China, a real outrage. Of course, that’s not representative either, but for example ‘Captain Marvel’ went up to 154 million and ‘Ant-Man and the Wasp’ stayed at 121.
For example, that meant that ‘Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness’ failed to overcome the barrier of 1,000 million dollars collection for remaining unreleased there -it left theaters with 955 million-. In fact, in phase 4 of Marvel only ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ managed to exceed that figure, although in his case it prevented him from going beyond 2,000 million and he had to “settle for” a worldwide income of 1,921 million , enough to occupy the sixth position in the list of the highest grossing films of all time -it became the fifth at the time, but it has ended up being surpassed by ‘Avatar: The sense of water’-.
The funny thing is that from China an exact reason was never given to justify that unofficial ban on Marvel movies. Instead they focused on calling for impossible changes like Spider-Man: No Way Home removing the Statue of Liberty from the film because he thought it was too patriotic.
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