Chinese leaders are not fans of the highly mature themes throughout DEADPOOL. According to The Hollywood Reporter the country has banned the mature rated hero's film from playing in its theaters dues to its graphic violence, nudity and language.
"Deadpool, which was produced by 20th Century Fox and based on the Marvel comic book character, has been denied permission to screen in China due to its violence, nudity and graphic language. A source close to the decision at China Film Group tells THR that the reports are indeed accurate."
This movie is really meant to be nothing but a hard R rating, although Hollywood usually caters to the Chinese box office. This is due to China's lack of a rating system and Hollywood sends them cuts of films that are a little less violent and less sexually charged than are seen domestically and in most other countries on the planet. THR sources also say that DEADPOOL filmmakers cannot change the R rated nature of the movie without losing important plot points to the story.
So this also means a fan petition for a PG-13 edit of DEADPOOL probably won't happen either.
This could be seen as a big blow to the release and box office potential of DEADPOOL, since China is the biggest movie market outside of the United States and its market can really help movies who don't perform well stateside (recent example, Terminator: Genisys). However, DEADPOOL has been reported to have a smaller production budget than most super hero movies (probably somewhere in the $50-$70 million range) and his individual popularity is right up there with fellow Marvel comic book icons like: Spider-Man, Captain America, Iron Man and Wolverine.
Finally here's a thought... maybe its time to use the lack of a DEADPOOL release in China as the call-to-action to finally have a movie rating system in place. Just saying.
DEADPOOL releases on February 12, 2016.
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