New Star Wars Film Gets a China Release

By Tye Donaldson, November 30, 2016

Good news, Star Wars fans! Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is coming to China.

According to China Film Insider, the film just received a cinematic release for the Chinese mainland. However, it is unlikely that the film will be given a day-to-date release.

Rouge One is set to be released in Belgium and Sweden on December 14, the United Kingdom on December 15, and lastly North America on December 16.

Industry watchers speculate the movie will be on the big screens in China sometime within the first quarter of 2017.

And while local media predicted that the film will be released in China on January 6, 2017, the the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) has listed the date as January 12. Meanwhile, Hong Kong is listed as having a release date of December 15, 2016.

Disney has already made a massive marketing push to build awareness for the films, which still remain relatively unknown in the Mainland. Promoting the nostalgic aspect of the series reboot to China has been a challenge for Disney: the original films debuted just as China was emerging from the Cultural Revolution, and thus were not widely seen during the initial release. (That could explain these bizarre Chinese Star Wars comics). In fact, it wasn't until recently that the original films were screened in the Mainland for the first time.

Disney is hoping to change that. Just last year, the company announced it was casting Hong Kong action star Donnie Yen to play a Jedi in Star Wars: Episode VIII.

The most recent installment of the series, The Force Awakens, failed to meet expectations in China, earning just RMB824.74 million in box office sales in its first four weeks. That's not a lot when compared to Warcraft, which earned RMB1.4718 billion.

[Image via starwars.com]