There has been some online chatter started by boxofficetheory.com about why Black Adam was not released in China despite the fact that Dwayne Johnson has a huge fan following in the country. The post on Reddit read: “Black Adam has been banned in China. Star Pierce Brosnan bearing Dalai Lama insignia in a recent interview is rumored to be the reason. Chinese Marvel fans allegedly used this to rally to have the movie banned there.”

Brosnan gave an interview recently to GQ where he mentioned he had met the Dalai Lama. He also posted 85^th birthday greetings to the Tibetan spiritual leader on Instagram and has funded many Tibetan charities.

While there are other reasons that Black Adam may have been banned, like the fact that it has supernatural themes which are generally censored by Chinese authorities, and its story deals with people rising up against a dictatorship, China has banned other stars in the past that have allied themselves with the Dalai Lama or supported Tibet.

The best example is Richard Gere who spoke out about Chinese repression at the 1993 Oscars and managed to get himself banned not only from China for his lifetime, but from the Oscars for several years as well. Hollywood studios stopped casting him in movies that had hopes of opening in China, severely impacting his career. In 2017, he told The Hollywood Reporter, “There are definitely movies that I can’t be in because the Chinese will say, ‘Not with him.’ I recently had an episode where someone said they could not finance a film with me because it would upset the Chinese.”

Earlier this year, Keanu Reeves participated in the annual Tibet House Benefit Concert that was held online. The backlash was swift. The Matrix Revolutions had just opened in China and was boycotted by nationalists who raised a huge outcry. The film did not perform well. Moreover, streaming platforms such as Tencent Video, Youku, and Migou Video removed all his films.

Harrison Ford’s ex-wife Melissa Mathison wrote the script for Martin Scorsese’s Kundun which was released in 1997, and since then, Ford has been an advocate for a free Tibet. He has been banned from entering China for testifying before the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee on China’s human rights violations. Scorsese has also been banned from entering the country.

Back in 2008, Sharon Stone remarked at the Cannes Film Festival that the Dalai Lama was a “good friend.” She went on to say that an earthquake in China was because of ‘bad karma’ over its treatment of Tibet. China was infuriated, and even though Stone later apologized, a major theater chain vowed never to show her movies and she was banned from entering the country.

Brad Pitt was banned for 19 years after he made Seven Years in Tibet in 1997 in which he played the 14^th Dalai Lama’s tutor. The ban was lifted only in 2016.

For the weekend of November 4-6, a couple of new releases showed up in cinemas, but the top ten list mostly had the same movies that have been around for weeks. By the way, THR reported that Shanghai Disneyland was locked down again in a snap decision related to Covid on October 31 with viral videos showing guests rushing to locked gates, disallowed from leaving till they produced a negative test result. The videos were subsequently scrubbed from social media.

Once more, leading the list was Home Coming which has grossed $224.7 million over 38 days, earning $4.02 million over the weekend. The Rao Xiao Zhi-directed film is about the heroic deeds of a Chinese diplomat and a civil servant who evacuate 125 Chinese from a war-torn North African country. It stars Zhang Yi and Karry Wang.

New release Serendipity Love debuted at No. 2 with $2.45 million over the three-day weekend. The story is about a disappearing bride on the eve of her wedding. It is directed by Zhen Yongbo and stars He Landou and Cao Yuchen.

Give Me Five fell to No. 3. Its total gross is $77.11 million over 59 days, with $1.93 million earned over the weekend. The sci-fi Chinese film tells of a young man who travels back in time to the 1980s to help his Alzheimer’s-afflicted father remember his life. It is directed by Zhang Luan and stars Chang Yuan.

The fourth movie on the list, Ordinary Hero, made just over half a million dollars over the weekend ($0.54 million) with a total of $31.63 million over 38 days. It is based on a true story of a rescue team racing against time to transport a 7-year-old boy with a severed arm over 1,400 miles from a Hotan village to a hospital in the Xinjian Autonomous Region. It is directed by Tony Chan and stars Li Bingbing, Huang Xiaoming, and Feng Shaofeng.

The space-themed animated New Happy Dad and Son 5: My Alien Friend, ended in fifth place on Sunday with just $0.27 million, for a total gross of $13.04 million over 37 days.

A new animated film took the sixth slot – Frog Prince Adventures 2 – but it is in previews and officially opens November 12. It earned $0.20 million over the weekend.

The last four on the top ten list are Steel Will, The Tyrannosaurus Rex, Table for Six, and Cinderella and the Spellbinder. All made a few hundred thousand dollars each over the weekend and three have been out for around five weeks; Table for Six has been in release for almost two months.