'Avatar' to Get Surprise Re-Release in China (Exclusive) - Hollywood Reporter

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4:12 AM PST 3/9/2021 by Patrick Brzeski

The plan could have the unexpected effect of restoring James Cameron's 2009 sci-fi epic as the highest-grossing movie ever, pushing 'Avengers: Endgame' back into second place.

Seemingly out of nowhere, James Cameron is back at the multiplex — but only in China.

China's Film Bureau has approved a surprise plan for the director's 2009 sci-fi epic Avatar to get a wide re-release in the country on Friday, according to two sources at Chinese movie theater companies, which were informed of the arrangements. The technologically trailblazing blockbuster will be made available to exhibitors for a nationwide release in both Imax 3D and ordinary 3D.

The sudden rollout of the movie could have the unexpected effect of restoring Cameron and Avatar's crown as the highest-grossing movie in global box-office history (not adjusted for inflation), pushing Marvel's Avengers: Endgame back into second place. Endgame currently tops the record books with $2.797 billion and change, with Avatar trailing at $2.790 billion — meaning the Pandora-set, blue-peopled sci-fi spectacular will need to earn just under $7.4 million to reclaim the crown.

Although odd in its hastiness, the plan to bring back Avatar in China isn't quite as unexpected as it seems. The 20th Century Fox film (now owned by Disney) was among a short list of historically popular blockbuster titles China's Film Bureau requested for re-release last March, when China's cinemas were attempting a staged reopening as the country began to get a handle on local spread of the coronavirus. With both Hollywood and Chinese studios holding back their new releases for the full-scale reopening, China's Film Bureau turned to back catalogs in an effort to gradually reboot cinemas. A flare-up in COVID-19 cases slowed those plans, however, and most of the catalog movies never made it back to screen.

The exhibitors THR spoke with on Tuesday said the digital cinema packages (DCPs) for Avatar were completed last year, and it appears a decision was made to put them to use. Some in the Chinese industry have said that the state-backed distributor China Film Group should push for slightly more time to prepare for the re-release, which could mean Avatar is delayed in hitting Chinese screens again by another week or two. As things stand, however, theater managers have been informed that the date is set for Friday. An official public announcement is said to be imminent.

The Hollywood Reporter's messages to Disney about the plans went unreturned Tuesday.

Avatar is an especially nostalgic Hollywood title for Chinese millennials. The movie was among the first wave of Hollywood blockbusters to sweep the country as it was entering its high-growth box-office boom era of the late aughts — and Avatar became the biggest sensation of them all. The film opened on a bitterly cold Monday in Beijing in January, 2009, instantly setting a new record for biggest opening ever in China on a weekday. The Hollywood Reporter's Beijing correspondent at the time wrote of Chinese cinema-goers lined up outside theaters in foot-deep snow, waiting to get a glimpse of Cameron's 3D vision of pandora. The film was so popular there that Cameron even considered co-producing his Avatar sequels in China.

Avatar topped out at $202.6 million, an astonishing sum for the China market then, when it was still trailing Japan as the third-biggest theatrical film territory (today, it is the world's largest). It took four years and the construction of thousands more cinemas in China for Avatar's record to fall to Stephen Chow's Journey to the West, which brought in $215 million in 2013.

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'Avatar' to Get Surprise Re-Release in China (Exclusive) - Hollywood Reporter
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