On Sun, 31 Jul 2022 13:29:35 -0700, Dimensional Traveler
This is less because of the censorious demands and more because the
movies aren't as profitable in China as you'd expect. That's not to
say that Western movies aren't popular in China - they are, although
its hard to gauge which movies will be a success and which will flop
due to cultural differences - but because of ticketing shenanigans. As
I understand it, movie theaters are supposed to promote Chinese movies
over Western ones, and failure to do so gets your business
investigated/shut-down. So the theaters sell people tickets to a
Chinese movie and then let them instead watch the western film.
Unfortunately, this means that the Hollywood film doesn't get any
revenue from the sale, so even though millions of people in China
might see "Space Trek XXIV: Avengering Twilight", the sales figures
are miniscule. Since all these profits in China are flowing to Chinese
film companies /and/ it keeps the populace happy, the Chinese
government isn't doing anything about this (except when the messaging
of the movie is considered too extravagantly anti-China).
So despite there being a potential market of over a billion viewers in
China, Hollywood is becoming less enamored with with the market.
They'd happily chop out the Statue of Liberty if it meant they were
getting the cash, but since they're not, why bother?