After a four-year absence from the Chinese market, movies from the Marvel superhero franchise are once again expected to be allowed into the country as of next month.
Walt Disney Studios subsidiary Marvel Studios has already announced on Chinese social media that "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever" and "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania" are slated to be released in China’s movie theaters on February 7 and 17 respectively.
While a number of Marvel movies have been denied release in Chinese cinemas by the China Film Administration (CFA), which essentially determines which foreign films are allowed in China, the regulator apparently never provided any explanation for what some media outlets describe as a de facto ban.
One media outlet, however, noted that film industry analysts have so far come up with a number of potential reasons, such as tensions between China and the United States or the inclusion of “LGBTQ+ characters” and “symbols of US patriotism” (like the Statue of Liberty) in the movies.
The release of “Spider-Man: No Way Home” in China in 2022 was allegedly denied by the CFA after its request to remove the Statue of Liberty “from scenes they deemed too ‘patriotic’” was denied by the movie’s distributor Sony, the media outlet suggested.
The release of another 2022 Marvel movie, “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness”, was reportedly denied due to a “character with two lesbian mothers” being featured in the film, as well as due to a scene that contained a newspaper kiosk featuring “the Chinese characters for the Epoch Times, a newspaper critical of the Communist Party.”