Hollywood & China Are Breaking Up

The movies are full of painful breakups. But if you haven’t been paying attention to the box office over the past few months, you may have missed a fascinating development: Hollywood and China are now having a breakup of their own. It’s about time.

As of Monday, some of the biggest U.S. movies of the past few months have barely made a dent in China. Dune: Part Two, thus far the biggest movie in the U.S., is closing in on $280 million here. But it’s at around $50 million there. And Aquaman: The Lost Kingdom is at $65 million in China, half its U.S. gross. Some of that may be attributable to sequel fatigue and lack of audience interest in the now-defunct D.C. Extended Universe. But the original Aquaman made almost as much in China as it did in the U.S.

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Jack Butler

Jack Butler is a former submissions editor at National Review.

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The movies are full of painful breakups. But if you haven’t been paying attention to the box office over the past few months, you may have missed a fascinating development: Hollywood and China are now having a breakup of their own. It’s about time.

As of Monday, some of the biggest U.S. movies of the past few months have barely made a dent in China. Dune: Part Two, thus far the biggest movie in the U.S., is closing in on $280 million here. But it’s at around $50 million there. And Aquaman: The Lost Kingdom is at $65 million in China, half its U.S. gross. Some of that may be attributable to sequel fatigue and lack of audience interest in the now-defunct D.C. Extended Universe. But the original Aquaman made almost as much in China as it did in the U.S.