Apparently China’s film board doesn’t allow Hollywood movies to play in the country during a certain part of the year. This year Chinese movies have dominated the box office during the first few months of 2013, so it is possible there will be no blackout this year.
Matthew Velkes , the chief operating officer of Village Roadshow Pictures Entertainment has said that if there is a blackout, distributors Village Roadshow Pictures Asia, Universal and China Film may shift the release date of Man of Tai Chi to take advantage of the blackout period. Universal is currently negotiating the release date. Velkes has said:
“The current dating is somewhere around June in China, but it’s changing,” Velkes said. “We’d like to take advantage of a blackout period.”
It is not clear if this means they will move the release date to a time that does not fall within the China mandated blackout period so they can maximize the Chinese box office or if it means they want to release the film elsewhere during the China blackout to maximize the domestic and other foreign box offices. It’s also not clear if this means we will see Man of Tai Chi released sooner than planned or later.
If anyone is familiar with this type of issue and can shed light on it please leave a comment. The entire article is here.