Today’s box office marketplace is all about the international take, especially from China. It’s why more movies are set in China and have stars that Chinese audiences like. But China also has stringent censorship laws, so where does that leave Hollywood, which wants to give filmmakers freedom to tell whatever stories they want, but still doesn’t want to hurt the bottom line?
This is the conflict facing Universal with Crimson Peak, a film that flopped stateside, but the studio was hoping could pull in international box office, similar to Guillermo del Toro’s previous film, Pacific Rim. However, as THR reports, China has a “no ghost rule” because “China’s official censorship guidelines prohibit films that ‘promote cults or superstition.’” Before you ridicule them, keep in mind that in the U.S. we stop teenagers from seeing movies if people say “F***” more than once.
