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Thread: Coronavirus (COVID-19) Wuhan Pneumonia

  1. #256
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    I'm surprised 'China flu' conspiracy theorists aren't having a field day with this...

    Sep 19, 2020,05:50am EDT
    China More Dominant Than Ever In Covid-Related ‘PPE’ — And U.S. Flags

    Ken Roberts Contributor


    One of the companies importing N-95 masks from China was 3M, which was also manufacturing in the ... [+] GETTY IMAGES

    China is now accounting for more than 85% of all U.S. imports in the category dominated by N-95 respirators, disposable and non-disposable face masks, surgical drapes and surgical towels, and, oddly enough, including U.S. flags.

    As the United States closes in on 200,000 American deaths attributed to the coronavirus pandemic that originated in China, the textile category for these personal protection equipment items is growing more rapidly than any of China’s other top 15 imports into the United States this year, according to the latest Census Bureau data, which runs through July.

    Those top 15 imports accounted for almost 46% of U.S. imports from China.

    While overall U.S. imports from China are down 14.71%, which is more than overall U.S. imports, which are off 12.04%, the increase in the category dominated by the masks was 395.47%.

    The $10.8 billion total is three times the total the United States imported from the entire world in the same first seven months of 2019.

    That allowed the percentage of those imports arriving from China to increase from a still-lofty 70.17% in the first seven months of 2019, before the outbreak of the coronavirus, to the current market share, 85.43%.

    Even as the United States has aggressively ramped up its own manufacturing of such items, it has come to rely more heavily on China for these life-saving pieces of medical equipment than any time in at least a decade and almost certainly ever.

    While dominated by masks and other PPE, it is a broad category that includes furniture movers’ pads, pillowcases and wall banners — as long as they are made of textiles — and U.S. flags.

    Through there are a number of U.S. manufacturers of U.S. flags, imports from China in the first seven months of the year accounted for 98.91% of the total. The $4.28 million in U.S. flags, a trifling compared to $1.4 billion in N95 respirators, was the lowest total since 2015. The percentage, however, has been consistent for years.

    Though the category is broad, it does not, of course, necessarily capture all personal protection equipment.

    Looking more broadly at the leading U.S. imports from China through the first seven months of the year, 12 of the 15 fell in value.

    In addition to the textile category, a category of miscellaneous plastic articles — which also includes products that could be related to the pandemic, such as pneumatic mattresses, plastic facemasks and other laboratory ware — also increased 13.22% but accounted for a record 53.72% of all U.S. imports.

    Computer parts also increased, up 9.97% but China accounted for the lowest percentage of U.S. imports in more than a decade, at 28.7%. Two years earlier, that percentage was at 69.7%.

    One category, furniture fell more than 37% while three categories, toys, seats and lamps and lighting fixtures, all fell more than 20%. For all four, their percentage of U.S. market share was lower than at any time in more than a decade.



    Ken Roberts

    I didn’t leave the womb thinking I would find my life’s work writing and speaking about trade data, trying to make it interesting and relevant. But this is where I find myself. Today, the company I founded in 1998, WorldCity, has published annual TradeNumbers publications around the country, from Seattle to Miami, Los Angeles to New York and numerous points in between. Monthly, we upload more than 10 million pages and page views of Census data at ustradenumbers.com, on hundreds of airports, seaports, countries, and export and import commodities. I serve on the Federal Reserve’s Trade and Transportation Advisory Council. In the last year or so, I have spoken about trade in Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, Laredo, Miami and Chicago. I also post a weekly Trade Matters video. I don’t expect you to fawn over it like I do, but I hope I bring a little clarity, a different perspective or some insights that are helpful.
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  2. #257
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    Welcome to Golden Week

    The original article has trailers.

    From Jackie Chan’s Vanguard to Kung Fu Mulan, eight movies showing in China during golden week
    This year’s golden week box office will show how well China’s movie industry has recovered from the pandemic
    Legend of Deification is an early winner, chalking up US$11.7 million in advance ticket sales for its opening day on October 1
    Elaine Yau in Beijing
    Published: 5:45pm, 30 Sep, 2020

    Jiang Ziya in a still from animated film Legend of Deification, one of eight movies in the cinematic line-up for golden week.
    Jiang Ziya in a still from animated film Legend of Deification, one of eight movies in the cinematic line-up for golden week.
    Legend of Deification, the animated movie co-produced by the same company that made last year’s box office champion Nezha , is set to become the top grossing film on China’s national day holiday on Thursday. According to China’s largest ticketing app, Maoyan, Legend of Deification has so far chalked up 80 million yuan (US$11.7 million) in advance ticket sales for its opening day, which is also the start of the country’s “golden week” national holiday.
    Ranked second in Thursday’s advance ticket sales is patriotic movie My People My Homeland, which took in over 65 million yuan. Jackie Chan vehicle Vanguard, which opened a day earlier than Legend of Deification and My People My Homeland, reaped over 47 million yuan for advance ticket sales for Wednesday and Thursday.
    The Chinese film industry sees advance ticket sales for a film’s opening day on Maoyan as a credible gauge of audience response to a production and how it will fare at the box office in China.
    The week-long October national holiday in China usually brings rich pickings for studios, which fall over themselves to bring their best films to the big screen. Last year, golden week brought in 5 billion yuan in box office takings, more than double the 2.2 billion yuan of the previous year.


    Jackie Chan and Miya Muqi in a still from Vanguard.
    With the coronavirus outbreak largely under control in China, mainland cinemas have been reopened for two months. On September 25, the cap on seating capacity at cinemas was raised to 75 per cent.
    Industry analysts predict golden week this year will bring in 4.5 billion to 5 billion yuan in ticket sales, similar to last year’s figure, proof of the recovery of China’s cinema sector from the pandemic. Below are the eight movies which will be shown on the mainland during the golden week holiday.

    Legend of Deification
    The runaway box office success of Nezha has boosted the public’s expectations for Legend of Deification, co-produced by One and All Animation Studio, and Enlight Media which also produced Nezha last year.
    Like Nezha, which revolves around adventures of the eponymous mythological figure in Chinese folklore, Legend of Deification focuses on the exploits of Jiang Ziya, the mythological Chinese noble who helped kings Wen and Wu of the Zhou dynasty to overthrow the Shang dynasty.
    After overthrowing Shang, Jiang is at the peak of his career. About to be crowned the chief of all gods, he commits a mistake and is demoted to human status. Without his magical power, and ostracised in the human world, he embarks on a journey of salvation and self-discovery to reclaim his former glory.

    My People My Homeland
    Produced by Zhang Yimou and with Ning Hao as chief director, the film adopts the same format as My People, My Country , last year’s golden week box office champion. My People My Homeland is an anthology film comprising five chapters, each with a different director.
    Featuring A-list stars including Huang Bo and Shen Teng, the stories portray the love of mainlanders for, well, their homeland.

    Vanguard
    Hong Kong action film director Stanley Tong Kwai-lai and Jackie Chan team up in their sixth collaboration. Chan plays the chief of an international security team tasked with rescuing a hostage who has been kidnapped by mercenaries.
    Chan revealed to the media before that he nearly drowned in an accident when filming Vanguard. Since Chan and Tong started to work together in the early 1990s, they have made several hugely successful films, including Police Story 3: Super Cop and Rumble in the Bronx.

    Leap
    Released on September 25, Leap has so far earned 200 million yuan in ticket sales and 10 million yuan in advance ticket sales for Thursday. The 200 million yuan in sales puts it in ninth place on the list of 2020’s top 10 mainland films.
    Directed by Hong Kong director Peter Chan Ho-sun, Leap tells the story of the Chinese women’s national volleyball team over the past 40 years. Gong Li plays Lang Ping, the current head coach of the team. It traces how the team became world champions and defended the title in international competitions.

    Coffee or Tea?
    Produced by Peter Chan and directed by Xu Hongyu, the comedy stars heartthrobs Liu Haoran, Peng Yuchang and Yin Fang. This is an uplifting yarn about three young men who give up city comforts for the rustic life in a 1,000-year-old village in Yunnan. Beating all the odds, they set up an e-commerce business there and strike up friendships with the locals. The film will be released on October 4.

    Kung Fu Mulan
    To be released on October 3, this mainland animated version of beloved Chinese traditional hero Hua Mulan comes hot on the heels of the disastrous showing of Disney’s live-action remake. This is the first mainland animation about the historical figure.
    The Mulan in this animation differs from the Disney’s Mulan, which stuck to the traditional image of the filial and patriotic warrior.

    Let Life be Beautiful
    To be released on October 5, this movie, based on true events, portrays a young man who battles leukaemia with optimism and bravery. Faced with much uncertainty, he perseveres in pursuing his goal and dreams.
    Playing the stricken young man is 14-year-old Rong Zishan, who became a household name overnight in China recently for his starring role in hit TV series The Bad Kids. Rong’s performance as a pathos-filled student grappling with a broken family and a murderer on his back earned rave reviews from critics. In spite of being a child star, he has already worked with several famous directors, including Jia Zhangke in 2015’s Mountains May Depart .

    Kikujiro
    Released in Japan in 1999, and written by and starring Japanese film icon Takeshi Kitano, Kikujiro has taken over six million yuan in ticket sales since its September 25 release on the mainland.
    Rated 8.8 out of 10 on Douban, China’s equivalent to IMDb, the movie revolves around the adventures of a primary student who, having been raised by his grandma, decides to go to Toyohashi in Aichi Prefecture to look for his mother on his own.


    Takeshi Kitano (left) and Yusuke Sekiguchi in a still from Kikujiro (1999). Photo: Office Kitano
    After arriving in Toyohashi, the helpless child runs into a kindhearted woman who asks her layabout husband (Kitano) to help him out. The man and the kid then embark on a journey of self-discovery together.
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  3. #258
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    Jiang Ziya FTW

    Oct 1, 2020 7:52pm PT
    China Hits Highest Single-Day Ticket Sales of the Year, Notching Its Second-Biggest National Day Earnings Ever


    By Rebecca Davis


    Courtesy of Well Go USA
    The Chinese box office hit its highest single-day tally of the year so far on Thursday, reaching $107 million (RMB728 million), more than 10 times what North American cinemas made in the whole of last weekend. That sum marks China’s second largest Oct. 1 National Day box office in history, a feat achieved even as cinemas continue to operate at just 75% capacity.

    Thursday was this year a dual holiday coincidentally marked by both the Mid-Autumn Festival and the first day of the week-long National Day vacation, typically one of the busiest times for cinemas.

    Meanwhile, to compare, the total gross for North American over the latest three-day weekend period was just $9.26 million. Relative levels of movie-going are of course tied to progress in battling the pandemic: China logged just 11 new coronavirus cases nationwide on Wednesday, whereas the U.S. logged 43,114.

    Leading China’s box office Thursday was Enlight’s hotly anticipated animation “Jiang Ziya: Legend of Deification,” a sequel of sorts from the same cinematic universe as last summer’s breakout animation hit “Nezha,” which went on to become China’s second-highest grossing film ever.

    It opened strong at number one with $52.7 million, according to data from industry tracker Maoyan — setting a record for the highest single-day ticket sales for an animated title in China of all time. It also opened Thursday in select U.S. theaters, distributed by Well Go USA.

    In second was the patriotic film purpose-made for the National Day holiday, “My People, My Homeland,” which grossed $39.3 million on its opening day. Produced by Beijing Culture, the omnibus film is executive produced by Zhang Yimou and features shorts from top directors Ning Hao, Xu Zheng, Chen Sicheng, Yan Fei, Peng Damo, Deng Chao and Yu Baimei.

    The Jackie Chan-starring actioner “Vanguard,” directed by Stanley Tong, came in third on its second day in theaters, with earnings of $8.25 million bringing its two-day cume up to $16.8 million. The film is also set to open Friday in the Ukraine and later this month in Russia via distributor Trinity CineAsia, which also holds rights in the U.K. and Ireland.

    Peter Chan’s “Leap,” which opened last week, came in fourth with $6.34 million, while “The Eight Hundred” held its own in sixth, earning $265,000 on its 42nd day in theaters.

    A propaganda documentary of the 2019 National Day military parade, a blowout to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic, debuted Thursday in seventh, earning $134,400. It was produced by China’s only military-affiliated film studio.
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  4. #259
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    Ironic that this title be a final nail in this coffin

    October 3, 2020 5:13pm PT
    Cineworld Could Close All Regal Cinemas, U.K. Venues in Response to ‘No Time to Die’ Delay

    By Manori Ravindran


    Cineworld
    UPDATED: Cineworld could shutter 543 of its Regal Cinema venues in the U.S. and all cinemas across the U.K. and Ireland this coming week, just a day after James Bond film “No Time to Die” was pushed to April 2021.

    On Sunday afternoon U.K. time, Cineworld confirmed that it is “considering the temporary closure” of its U.K. and U.S. cinemas, but that a final decision hasn’t yet been reached.

    Variety understands that staff were informed of Cineworld’s plans on Sunday — ahead of the company’s statement — with HR explaining that the closure of all cinemas is “one option that is strongly being considered,” though a decision hasn’t yet been made.

    Variety understands from sources that the chain may close all sites in both countries as early as this week. Regal is the second largest domestic chain in the U.S., while Cineworld is the U.K.’s biggest cinema operator.

    In the U.K., Cineworld is understood to be writing to Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden this weekend to explain that the exhibition sector is “unviable” due to studios delaying tentpoles as a result of anxious audiences steering clear of cinemas amid the global pandemic. The Cineworld closures will put up to 5,500 jobs at risk in the U.K.

    Sources indicate a reopening date hasn’t yet been set, but cinemas could stay closed until 2021.

    The swift move by the Mooky Greidinger-run chain, whose U.K. closures were first reported by The Sunday Times, follows Friday’s bombshell Bond announcement. Though there had been speculation that “No Time to Die” could move from its Nov. 12 and Nov. 20 slots in the U.K. and North America, respectively, many in the industry, including several global exhibition bosses, believed it would ultimately hold firm. Its new date of April 2, 2021, has come as a distressing shock to the exhibition sector, which is starved of vital blockbusters to bring audiences back to movie theaters.

    Cineworld staff weren’t informed of the company’s decision in advance of Saturday’s news. Cineworld Action Group, a collective of employees supported by entertainment union Bectu, tweeted on Saturday that “there has been no consultation with staff whatsoever.” News of the closures first emerged via a preview of The Sunday Times’ front page, posted late on Saturday night.

    Cineworld’s shock move comes weeks after the company said in its half-year results that there was no certainty around its COVID-19 outlook. In a forward-looking statement, the firm said, “If governments were to strengthen restrictions on social gathering, which may therefore oblige us to close our estate again or further push back movie releases, it would have a negative impact on our financial performance and likely require the need to raise additional liquidity.”

    In the U.K., Cineworld opened its doors after a four-month shutdown only on July 31. The company had planned to open July 10, but pushed its dates back after “Tenet” was delayed the first time around. In the U.S., Regal Cinemas began opening venues in late August, ahead of the release of the Christopher Nolan thriller.

    “No Time to Die,” starring Daniel Craig in his final stint as the agent formerly known as 007, will hit theaters on April 2, 2021 — a year later than initially planned.

    “MGM, Universal and Bond producers, Michael G Wilson and Barbara Broccoli, today announced the release of ‘No Time To Die,’ the 25th film in the James Bond series, will be delayed until 2 April in order to be seen by a worldwide theatrical audience,” the filmmakers said in a statement on Friday. “We understand the delay will be disappointing to our fans but we now look forward to sharing ‘No Time To Die’ next year.”

    Numerous movies were shuffled around in the wake of “Tenet’s” lackluster U.S. box office performance in September. Because the Bond franchise relies heavily on international ticket sales, the decision to move “No Time to Die” into next year is not entirely surprising: Coronavirus cases in Europe have started to rise again and New York and Los Angeles, the two biggest U.S. markets, remain closed.

    The delay is major blow to theaters, and there’s a chance more could be forced to close given the lack of new content on the horizon. Pixar’s “Soul” on Nov. 20 is now the next big movie slated for theatrical release. However, there are rumblings that Disney will move the animated adventure and possibly even put it on Disney Plus, the studio’s subscription streaming service. Two Warner Bros. titles, “Wonder Woman 1984” and “Dune,” are still set for December, though there’s a chance those could be postponed again as well.
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  5. #260
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    Closing Thursday

    Follow up on the post above

    THE CORONAVIRUS CRISIS
    Regal Movie Chain Will Close All 536 U.S. Theaters On Thursday

    October 5, 20201:38 PM ET
    BILL CHAPPELL

    Some 40,000 Regal theater employees are now facing a furlough across the U.S. after the movie chain announced it's closing all locations.
    Alex Scott/Bloomberg via Getty Images

    More than 7,000 movie screens will be dark in the U.S. this weekend as the Regal theater chain said it will shut down all 536 locations on Thursday. The closure reflects "an increasingly challenging theatrical landscape" due to the COVID-19 pandemic and is temporary, the chain said.

    Regal is shutting down theaters again less than two months after it started to reopen U.S. locations in late August. The decision was announced after the James Bond franchise's No Time to Die was shelved until 2021, further pushing back a release that had already been delayed.

    Regal is the second-largest film exhibitor in the U.S., after AMC Theatres. It is a subsidiary of Cineworld Group, which is based in the U.K. – where the corporation is also closing more than 100 theaters.

    Roughly 40,000 Regal employees across the U.S. now face a work furlough, the company told NPR. More than 5,000 employees in the U.K. will also be affected, the BBC reported.

    "This is not a decision we made lightly, and we did everything in our power to support a safe and sustainable reopening in the U.S.," said Mooky Greidinger, CEO of Cineworld, noting the chain's safety precautions for staff and moviegoers.

    In a statement, Greidinger emphasized that "there has been no evidence to date linking any COVID cases with cinemas." He also aired frustration that Regal can't yet operate in New York state, a key U.S. market, although some indoor venues such as bowling alleys and casinos have been allowed to resume business.

    Movie studios have delayed dozens of big releases over the past six months as cinemas sat empty or showed films only to limited audiences.

    The postponed titles include likely blockbusters such the superhero movies Wonder Woman 1984 and Black Widow along with A Quiet Place Part II and Candyman. In addition, Disney shifted several high-profile releases to online-only, including Mulan.

    "The prolonged closures have had a detrimental impact on the release slate for the rest of the year, and, in turn, our ability to supply our customers with the lineup of blockbusters they've come to expect from us," Greidinger said. "As such, it is simply impossible to continue operations in our primary markets."

    While the company calls the closures temporary, it did not name a date for a possible resumption of business, saying it will "continue to monitor the situation closely."

    The coronavirus has hammered Cineworld's stock price, which commanded around $275 one year ago. On Friday, the share price was hovering just below 40 British pounds (about $52) – but with the new closures, it plummeted below 17 pounds (about $22) on Monday before recovering some of those losses.
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  6. #261
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    Covid kills movie theaters

    ENTERTAINMENT MOVIES
    DUNE, NO TIME TO DIE AND BLACK WIDOW ARE ALL DELAYED UNTIL 2021. HERE’S WHAT THAT MEANS FOR THE FUTURE OF MOVIES
    Dune, No Time to Die and Black Widow Are All Delayed Until 2021. Here’s What That Means for the Future of Movies

    Timothée Chalamet in Warner Bros.' now delayed sci-fi epic 'Dune' Warner Bros.
    BY ELIANA DOCKTERMAN
    OCTOBER 6, 2020 12:35 PM EDT
    Movie theaters are in trouble.

    It’s been a lackluster year at cinemas, to say the least. Movie theaters have sat empty during spikes in the COVID-19 pandemic. Movie houses in the two biggest markets in the U.S., New York City and Los Angeles, remain closed as those cities fight to keep infection numbers under control. Over the summer, Hollywood looked to Christopher Nolan’s highly-anticipated Tenet as a savior of the moviegoing experience, but when the film finally premiered after numerous delays, it trickled out to little fanfare. (It has managed to bring in $300 million, mostly from overseas, though that box office total falls far short of the rest of Nolan’s films.) Still, theater owners have been pinning their hopes on a resurgence in moviegoing this fall.

    But in the last two weeks, as case numbers have risen across the U.S. and it has become increasingly apparent that people simply do not feel safe going to the movies, studios have begun to push the last of their 2020 films to 2021, dashing those hopes. On Monday, Cineworld—which owns Regal Cinemas, the second largest theater chain in the U.S.—announced that all of its 663 cinemas in the U.S. and Britain would close temporarily, affecting around 40,000 employees. AMC, the largest theater chain in the States, will stay open, though the company’s stock fell 10% following its rival’s statement on Monday.

    Mooky Greidinger, the CEO of Cineworld, said on Sky News, “It’s the wrong decision from the studios to move the movies to next year,” and exhibitioners have squarely laid the blame on the producers of the latest Bond film, No Time to Die. Back in March, the film’s producers were among the first to anticipate that the spread of the coronavirus would wreak havoc on theaters and delayed the release of the Daniel Craig movie from April until November. On Friday, No Time to Die abruptly shifted dates again to April 2, 2021. “This isn’t the right time,” Craig said in an interview with Jimmy Fallon on Monday. He even cast doubt on the ability of movie theaters to reopen in the spring. “Fingers crossed April 2 is going to be our date.” Cineworld employees say that No Time to Die’s date shift is what compelled the theater chain to close.

    But studios can hardly be blamed for a logical business move—not to mention a wise public health decision. The few movies that have released in theaters across the world this summer, including Tenet, Mulan and X-Men: New Mutants, have not performed well. Health experts have warned for the last several months that sitting inside with strangers for prolonged periods of time—even at a distance—is unsafe, especially if ventilation is poor and those strangers are taking off their masks to eat popcorn and sip soda. “It’s just about the last thing I’d do right now,” one epidemiologist told The A.V. Club. For many would-be moviegoers, the risk is too high.

    And so studios, unwilling to take huge financial hits on films that might succeed in theaters in the future, are bumping their slates. Bond moved. Disney delayed Black Widow from May 2020 until November 2020, and now has pushed the film’s premiere again until May 7, 2021. Dune, originally set for December 2020, will move to Oct. 1, 2021. There are still a few holiday movie holdouts, including Disney and Pixar’s Soul and Warner Bros.’ Wonder Woman 1984, but it’s likely those movies will move as well.

    Regal, which like AMC has billions of dollars of debt, is left with little recourse. Smaller theaters face even grimmer prospects. Meanwhile, streamers like Netflix are offering thousands of hours of content to consumers at home, competition which terrifies an industry dependent on fans packing theaters. Here’s what all these delays mean for the future of your favorite franchises and the fate of the moviegoing experience.

    Could any of the delayed movies still end up on streaming or VOD this year?

    Studios, especially those with their own affiliated streaming services, could send some fare straight to streaming this year. WarnerMedia, for instance, owns both Warner Bros. and HBO Max. So it makes perfect sense that Warner Bros. has decided to release its Anne Hathaway movie The Witches, based on the Roald Dahl children’s book of the same name, straight to HBO Max rather than debut it in theaters. That movie, directed by Robert Zemeckis (Forrest Gump, Cast Away), is one of the larger offerings, along with Mulan, to pivot to streaming this year.

    Similarly, Disney could send a movie like Pixar’s Soul, which is currently still slated for Nov. 20, 2020, to Disney+. Disney would likely charge viewers an extra fee on top of the Disney+ subscription for a period of time, as they did when Mulan debuted on the service.

    Other studios that don’t have an obvious outlet for their films would have to cut a deal with a streaming service. MGM, which produces the Bond films, has no streaming service, and while they cut a deal with Universal for the international streaming rights for Bond, Universal’s only streaming outlet is the newly-launched Peacock, which hasn’t built up an adequate enough subscriber base to attract audiences to a big release like the latest 007 movie.

    And regardless, don’t expect movies like No Time to Die or Wonder Woman 1984 to ever go straight to VOD. Studio executives believe those films are dependent on the immersive, cinematic experience and lose much of their power when watched for the first time at home, possibly even on a phone. What’s more, action movies cost hundreds of millions of dollars to produce, and it’s not clear whether studios can turn a large profit or even recoup their costs when they send these films straight to streaming.

    There’s mixed evidence that big-budget movies can succeed financially on streaming. If Netflix’s self-reported numbers are to be believed, some of its splashy superhero movies, like The Old Guard starring Charlize Theron, are massive hits: Netflix reported that movie was watched by 72 million households in the first month of its release. Netflix depends on subscriptions, not streaming purchases, so it’s hard to say directly how much money Netflix made from The Old Guard. Disney offers a less optimistic data point: Mulan made $33.5 million in its opening weekend from Disney+ subscribers. That’s a lot of money for a streaming movie. But Mulan, which was also saddled with controversy, likely cost over $200 million to make, and scored a lackluster opening weekend overseas: It was one of Disney’s worst-performing remakes at the Chinese box office.

    What does it all mean for 2021 at the movies?

    Right now, 2021 is looking very crowded. Studios have shifted many of their most anticipated films from 2020 to 2021, including Black Widow, Dune, The Eternals, Fast & Furious 9, Ghostbusters: Afterlife, In the Heights, Morbius, No Time to Die, A Quiet Place Part II, Top Gun: Maverick, West Side Story and many more. There are only so many weekends per year, and it’s not like theaters will magically reopen their doors on Jan. 1. So in order to make room for all the 2020 movies, studios will be forced to either compete with one another for dwindling box office returns on the same weekend or bump some of their 2021 movies to 2022.

    Those dominos have already begun to fall. Dune moved to the 2021 weekend that was already occupied by the Robert Pattinson starrer The Batman, and the latest caped crusader reboot shifted to March 4, 2022. The long-awaited Avatar sequel moved from December 2021 to December 2022 in order to make room for one of Disney’s other movies, the third Tom Holland Spider-Man flick. Halloween Ends has shifted from October 2021 to October 2022. Matrix 4 is a unique case, as its release was actually moved up from April 2022 to December 22, 2021. DC movie The Flash was pushed from June 3, 2022 to November 4, 2022, and Shazam 2 has moved from that November 2022 slot to June 2, 2023. The untitled Indiana Jones movie we were supposed to get next summer won’t debut until July 2022. And Black Adam and Minecraft have been taken off the schedule entirely.

    Things may yet shift again if there is no widespread distribution of a vaccine by spring 2021. But studios are incentivized to hold out for the theatrical release of their movies. A few films have cut their losses and headed straight to VOD, like Trolls World Tour. That children’s movie made nearly $100 million in the first week of rentals, more than the previous Trolls film had made in that time in theaters. But franchises like Marvel and Fast & Furious expect to make billions, not millions, in theaters: Furious 7 grossed $1.5 billion globally, and Captain Marvel raked in $1.13 billion.

    Many filmmakers, too, fervently believe in the theatrical experience and want to do their part to keep those communal gathering spots in business. When director John Krasinski announced that A Quiet Place II would shift its release date, he wrote on Instagram, “One of the things I’m most proud of is that people have said our movie is one you have to see all together….As insanely excited as we are for all of you to see this movie…I’m gonna wait to release the film til we CAN all see it together! So here’s to our group movie date!”
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    continued from previous post

    What does this mean for Marvel, DC, and other superhero franchises?

    Gal Gadot as Diana in Wonder Woman 1984 Clay Enos—Warner Bros. & DC Comics

    The state of superhero movies is a little more complicated. The genius of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, up until this point, has been how all the movies are connected to one another. The post-credits scene from, say, a Captain America movie, will set up Black Panther: the Black Panther post-credits scene previews the next Avengers installment, and so on. In order to get the full story, you need to watch all 23 MCU movies.

    Unfortunately, that means Disney doesn’t have much flexibility when it comes to releasing the superhero movies it currently has in the can. In all likelihood, the plot of Black Widow somehow ties in to future movies like Eternals or even Disney+ MCU TV series like Falcon and the Winter Soldier. If Disney were to release any of the movies or shows out of order, it would spoil the entire story. Delays for Black Widow and The Eternals mean that Doctor Strange: Multiverse of Madness, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings and Spider-Man 3 will inevitably need to be pushed back as well. That delay also means we likely won’t get to see the X-Men or Fantastic Four characters—whom Marvel Studios acquired when Disney bought 20th Century Fox last year—in any MCU movie for a long time.

    The other studios are a little less dependent on a strict schedule: Warner Bros. has established that Wonder Woman 1984 does not exist in the same universe as The Joker and is only tangentially related to the Harley Quinn movie that premiered earlier this year. Nor does she have anything to do with the Batman movie or the Suicide Squad reboot that are both currently filming. So Warner Bros. can release those movies whenever the studio feels they will be able to turn a profit.

    What does this mean for movie theaters and the moviegoing experience?

    Tenet was supposed to save the movies. It didn’t. No one movie ever could have. It’s made just $45 million domestically. This past weekend, Hocus Pocus, the Bette Midler Halloween film about witches that debuted 27 years ago, beat it at the box office.

    It’s unclear when people will want to go to movie theaters again. Only 17% of Americans feel comfortable attending the movies, according to a mid-August Morning Consult poll. Some health experts have called the movie theater experience during COVID-19 “Russian roulette,” pointing out that theaters make most of their money from concession, but people necessarily have to take off their masks to eat popcorn and slurp their soda. As the weather gets colder and people spend more time indoors in general, experts say we’re likely to see another wave of the virus. If people aren’t willing to attend the movies now, it’s unlikely they’ll be eager to catch the latest flick in the dead of winter if we’re seeing a spike in COVID-19 cases.

    That leaves cinemas in a precarious position, to say nothing of indies and arthouse theaters. Even once there is a vaccine, it’s unclear how long it will take theatergoers to venture out of their homes again: streaming services like Netflix threaten studios’ profits by offering alternative entertainment at home. Cinephiles fear that watching movies at home will become the norm.

    What does this mean for streaming services?

    One thing is certain: streaming is having a banner year. Disney+ and Apple TV+ both launched last fall, and HBO Max and Peacock joined the streaming arms’ race this year. As a result, audiences have more content than ever to choose from at home. This fall is no exception: Amazon Prime has scooped up several Oscar hopefuls, including Steve McQueen’s anthology of films titled Small Axe, Regina King’s directorial feature debut One Night in Miami. Apple TV+ will debut Sofia Coppola’s On the Rocks with Bill Murray and Rashida Jones as well as one of this year’s most raved-about animated films, Wolfwalkers. Disney+’s biggest releases will be television series, namely the second season of The Mandalorian and the MCU series WandaVision.

    But all those new services are just playing catchup to Netflix. Netflix has had more time to build up a massive library, and had already filmed most of its 2020 content before the virus hit and thus had to delay few releases. In Q2 of 2020, Netflix generated $6.14 billion in revenue, up from $4.9 billion at the same time last year. And Netflix has begun to experiment with bigger-budget productions made just for the small screen. Recent hits like The Old Guard, Spenser Confidential and Enola Holmes have proven, at least according to Netflix’s own analysis, that mid- to big-budget movies can succeed on streaming. Netflix releases a buzzy new movie or show every week—if not more often. In the coming months, they’ll release the Adam Sandler comedy Hubie Halloween, Aaron Sorkin’s Oscar hopeful Trial of the Chicago 7 and David Fincher’s latest, Mank.

    Streaming probably won’t supplant moviegoing. The movie date will always have a place in American culture. But the pandemic has, for now, accelerated the trend towards watching more content at home—and the timing of the movie date’s return is as uncertain as ever.
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    Premiere date #7?

    Oct 16, 2020 6:17am PT
    Will ‘Wonder Woman 1984’ Open on Christmas? ‘I Don’t Think Anybody Can Be Confident,’ Says Patty Jenkins


    By Adam B. Vary


    Wonder Woman 1984
    Photo courtesy of Warner Bros.
    When Warner Bros. announced last month that “Wonder Woman 1984” would open on Dec. 25, it was no less than the sixth release date for the movie, and the third since the COVID-19 pandemic has forced the film industry to play a losing game of hopscotch with the theatrical release calendar. Once expected to be the biggest movie of the summer, “Wonder Woman 1984” has been pushed this year from June 5 to Aug. 14, then again to Oct. 2, and now to Christmas as practically the only major theatrical release left in the calendar year.

    Asked about the ever-shifting release dates for the project for the latest Variety cover story, “Wonder Woman 1984” costar Pedro Pascal — who plays the villain Max Lord in the film — basically shrugged.

    “As far as movie releases are concerned and the tremendous way that the industry is having to improvise around these circumstances, nothing is surprising,” Pascal said. “We’re all getting used to things shifting day-to-day, hour-to-hour, you know? That’s what we’re all dealing with.”

    Whether Diana Prince will indeed grace multiplexes in the U.S. and Canada in 2020 at all remains very much an open question. Cases in the U.S. are surging once again, flu season is beginning to kick into gear, and some exhibitors have already announced plans to close before Dec. 25 due to the lack of fresh films and moribund consumer interest in attending theaters.

    “I don’t think anybody can be confident of anything right now,” director Patty Jenkins told Variety in a separate interview last month about Pascal. “We just don’t know what the course of COVID is going to be like.”

    Jenkins was quick to add that she’s “very hopeful” her film can still open on Dec. 25. “It feels totally possible to me,” she said.

    Still, by this point in the year, “Wonder Woman 1984” was supposed to have wrapped up its theatrical run after presumably conquering the world. Instead, Jenkins has been caught in an unpleasantly novel variant of Hollywood purgatory.

    “It’s unbelievably surreal,” Jenkins said. “The biggest surreality about it is it’s supposed to be one adventure, right? You sign on to the movie, you write the movie, you direct the movie, you make the movie, the movie comes out, and you move on. Instead, like, I spent three years doing one thing, seven days a week, and then I just popped out of it to just nothing. No evidence of that [work].”

    The filmmaker quickly stopped herself. “I mean, that’s not true. I still work on, you know, Doritos bags bags and stuff like that all the time,” she said. But her film’s been complete for months and yet until mid-September, virtually no one had see it.

    “For the longest time, the only people who’d seen the movie were the people who’d worked on the movie,” she said. “We just showed our own agents. That was thrilling, to finally get to talk to people who didn’t know what the movie was. But it’s super weird to go from making a movie with such detail and being so excited for the experience of people getting to share in that with you, and then just going on to cleaning your house and cooking.”

    For his part, Pascal remained philosophical about the ultimate fate of the biggest movie of his career so far.

    “I don’t know,” he said with a chuckle. “That would that would be like assuming I know scientifically, economically, socially so many large things that are just way above my pay-grade. We have information, but still there’s so much more information to be had and sometimes the information feels like it changes so quickly. As maddening and as scary as that feels like to live with on a day-to-day basis, it does make sense, because this is new. Every time I’m like, ‘Well, why don’t we knoowwww?’ It’s like, because it’s a new virus. It just takes time to figure it out.”
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    Online competitions

    Butler County martial arts academy training for unique national competition
    A martial arts business whose athletes routinely earn national titles moved into Middletown about a year ago. The approximately 5,000-square-foot training facility at 1725 Yankee Road was a structure that had been vacant for more than a year before Rob and Melissa Gerhardt renovated it into the second home of Budokai Academy of Martial Arts.
    NEWS
    | Oct 20, 2020
    By Ed Richter, Staff Writer

    As the coronavirus pandemic continues to force people to adapt to new norms, a local martial arts academy reopened after a three-month shutdown and has 70 students training to compete in a virtual national competition next weekend.

    Melissa Gerhardt of Budokai Academy of Martial Arts in Middletown said her standalone academy has the largest number of competitors in the national competition while another academy with nine locations in the Cleveland area has the next-highest total of students competing.

    She said her students in the competition range in age from 7 to late 50s and some have won national titles in the past.

    “The team has been training hard and it is a huge accolade to compete and win in this competition,” she said.

    She said instructors have to wear masks at all times but that is optional for students competing. Gerhardt said the competition team fights in events locally, regionally and nationally. Because of COVID-19, all of those events were cancelled this year. However, the Amateur Athletic Union for Taekwondo is holding a virtual nationals competition event next Friday and Saturday.

    While there is no sparring in a virtual competition, students will compete in several breaking, forms, and weapons events for a national title.

    Gerhardt said the breaking event includes competitors breaking 15 boards in the fastest time. The competitors perform skill in the weapons event that includes nunchucks and bow staves, and the form event is a demonstration of the competitors' execution of moves.

    She said judges will watch two competitors at a time and determine the winners. The competition is “one and done” in which the winners advance to the next bracket, Gerhardt said.

    “Our athletes are very excited to be a part of this and is definitely something positive during this pandemic,” she said.

    The top four black belts who win gold at the national competition will have the opportunity to compete for a spot on the national team and participate in AAU competitions, Gerhardt said.

    The local academy is affiliated with Kayla Harrison, a two-time Olympic gold medalist in judo who is now a PFL MMA champion and trains there when she is in her hometown of Middletown. It has 200 students, and there are many families training, she said.

    “It’s fun and it’s more of a family sport ... everyone is on the mat here,” she said. “People can socialize and some have a goal of becoming a black belt.”

    Last year, Gerhardt and her husband Rob opened the Middletown location at 1725 Yankee Road after outgrowing their previous location in Fairfield Twp. She retired as a sergeant with the Butler County Sheriff’s Office but recently returned as a part-time deputy/school resource officer.

    The school offers Tae Kwon Do, Olympic Sparring, Hapkido, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, Judo and Cardio Kickboxing, making it what Gerhardt said is “the only martial arts school in the Tri-State that offers all these arts under one roof.”
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    2020 Silicon Valley Virtual Open

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    Who here is doing ZOOM classes?

    Kung fu Master Helps Students Kick the Blues
    ByChang Jun October 27, 2020

    Lu Xiaohong puts students through their paces in an online class in California on Saturday. During the past six months, she has taught 3,000 students martial arts. [For China Daily]

    Lu Xiaohong, a kung fu master in the San Francisco Bay Area, could never have imagined just how much she is cheering up people in a pandemic with her teaching of the Chinese martial art.

    Offering free online lessons every Wednesday since early April, the 40-year-old aims to empower her students — more than 3,000 so far and coming from all backgrounds — by not only helping them improve their physiques but instilling in them the wisdom of kung fu. After 30 years of practice, Lu has much knowledge to impart via the one-hour lessons on the Zoom platform.

    One of the tenets Lu has taught her students is: "Endurance is one of the most difficult disciplines, but it is to the one who endures that the final victory comes."

    And, with the coronavirus pandemic still raging in the United States, she tells them: "A strong will plus optimism will eventually overpower panic, loss and frustrations. We will win."

    In mid-March, California announced a stay-at-home order to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus, which led to the temporary closure of the martial arts studio where Lu teaches.

    "I told my students at our last in-person gathering that we have to pause for a while," she said. "We thought this shutdown was not going to be long."

    With no timetable for a reopening in California, many students sought advice from Lu on how to stay upbeat and fit.

    "I knew it was the time to give back to the community," Lu said. "The first idea coming into my mind was to teach martial arts online."

    After she shared the Zoom link through social media platforms, Lu said she was "thrilled to see how quickly the slots filled up."

    "I felt there is a need for an outlet, a channel that everyone could utilize to alleviate anxiety and resume strength," she said.

    A national martial arts champion in China in the categories of long fist and staff, with her first award in 2001, Lu moved to the US two years ago.

    She hoped her expertise could help bolster cross-cultural, people-to-people exchanges.

    Settling down in Silicon Valley in 2018, she accepted an offer to work as a leading coach at a martial arts studio. Soon after, kung fu lovers in the Bay Area created a word-of-mouth buzz about "a new woman master from China "who knows how to teach.

    "My students are made up of a mix of races, cultures and backgrounds," said Lu. "You hear them talking with distinctive accents-Latino, Indian, Chinese, African American, Korean and Japanese. They're a very diverse group."

    Lu considers each student a unique individual who will benefit from the balanced approach and the discipline required of martial arts — the external training of the hands, eyes, posture and stance, as well as the internal training of the spirit, the mind and inner peace.

    Skanda, 7, had been a student of Lu's for two years. A shy boy at first, he tried to avoid Lu's gaze and couldn't perform the basic movements. To ignite his enthusiasm, Lu "played video clips starring Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan, and told students anecdotes associated with the two iconic masters."

    "Of course, I emphasize why self-confidence and self-challenging can transform a person," Lu said.

    It worked. Skanda gradually opened up after four to five classes — he kicks, punches, sweeps and jumps. He talks loudly and clearly.

    "One day, he told me that he wanted to be a kung fu master," Lu said. "His parents reported that the boy spends hours and hours practicing routines."

    Beginning of the Journey

    Lu wouldn't have embarked on her long, arduous martial arts journey without her father's resolve. Born in a small town in Shandong Province in East China, Lu was often sick as a child. To improve her health, her father sent her to a martial arts training center when she turned six.

    "The daily routine was like I needed to get up at 5:30 am, finish two hours of morning drills before I could have breakfast," she said. "Day in, day out, it's not uncommon that I had bruises, injuries, blisters often."

    There were many times she wanted to quit. "It was too much for a kid," she said.

    However, her father would borrow philosophy from martial arts to inspire Lu to continue. "For example, 'the last leg of a journey marks the halfway point', so 'to persevere means victory'."

    Those efforts yielded fruit.
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    bittersweet

    Oct 27, 2020 5:17pm PT
    In Cannes, a Bittersweet Mini-Festival Salutes the Past and Sets Out a Hopeful New Vision


    By Ben Croll


    Cannes 2020
    AP
    As the lights dimmed in the Grand Theatre Lumiere in Cannes on Tuesday evening, and the opening notes to Camille Saint-Saëns’ “The Carnival of Animals” echoed over the loudspeakers, one could almost imagine themselves back in the normal swing of things.

    In some respects, the opening night of the three-day ‘Special Cannes’ program felt very much like a return to halcyon days. Announced in late September, the mini-festival is intended to honor the Cannes 2020 selection with a showcase of four films that received the prestigious label, as well as the full Cinefondation lineup and a short film competition.

    At Tuesday’s opening screening of Emmanuel Courcol’s crowd-pleasing comedy drama “The Big Hit,” the security measures were more elaborate than ever; the state-of-the-art auditorium was at full capacity; and the screening was prefaced by a typically effusive introduction from Cannes delegate general Thierry Fremaux, among others.

    Only, the 1,000 attendees weren’t exactly back in the good old pre-pandemic days. Security measures dictated that every attendee keep their mask on throughout the film, with each filmgoer seated at least one seat apart from their neighbor on either side. This meant that ‘capacity’ was less than one half of what the 2,300-seat auditorium can otherwise allow.

    If the mood inside the theater was vibrant, Fremaux’s opening remarks were a reminder of the bittersweet circumstances that forced the Cannes Film Festival to claim this pop-up opportunity in the first place.

    “When we returned to this theater, where we had not stepped foot since May 2019, we all felt our hearts pinch,” said Fremaux, referencing the festival’s tough-but-inevitable decision to cancel its physical component this past summer. “[With this event], we wanted to light this screen up anew.”

    Fremaux’s remarks, and those of festival president Pierre Lescure and Cannes mayor David Lisnard, both looked back at the edition that never was, and forward to what the festival might look like in years to come.

    “In May, the [New York Times] wrote an article called ‘What Do We Lose When Cannes Is Canceled,’” Fremaux let out with an impish grin. “The article was so strong that we decided to cancel next year as well, because it seems we get better press when we don’t host a festival than when we do!”

    But in describing the pared-back program, which features the aforementioned “The Big Hit,” along with Naomi Kawase’s “True Mothers,” Dea Kulumbegashvili’s San Sebastian winner “Beginning,” and Bruno Podalydès’ “The French Tech,” Fremaux laid out a roadmap for how the festival perceives itself and how it might operate going forward.

    “We have two French films, and two international ones,” Fremaux began. “As well as two films directed by men and two directed by women. [That kind of parity is] something we will apply as much as possible. We will display those convictions.”

    In his remarks, Cannes mayor David Lisnard made the ongoing pandemic a focal point. “This edition incarnates this desire to come out of this stronger [than before], to fight and to overcome,” said Lisnard.

    Highlighting the “particularly draconian” security protocols — which include in-theater air purification, temperature controls and disinfection sprays upon entering the Palais des Festivals — Lisnard made implicit the municipal authority’s goal to see a successful physical iteration of the festival in 2021.

    “This is an exhortation,” said the mayor. “We need to make it understood that culture is a source of economic development, a source of social wealth, and a source of life…It’s a demonstration that we can and we should hold events while assuring the health and safety of all who attend. We will continue to fight to prove that we can do so.”

    And it goes without saying that when the festival makes its long-awaited return in 2021, many of these new measures will be here to stay.

    For the time being, however, attendees will have to cope with the more restrictive measures put in place by the French government in recent weeks. With COVID-19 cases on the rise and showing no signs of slowing within the days to come, national authorities instituted a countrywide 9 p.m. curfew on Oct. 24, and President Emmanuel Macron is widely expected to announce a new lockdown later this week.

    On the ground in Cannes, that means each screening must allow ample time for festivalgoers to get home or back to hotels before the clock strikes nine. When “The Big Hit” came to a close, drawing cheers and applause from the impassioned audience, the film’s cast and crew had just enough time to take the stage for a victory lap.

    At 8:20 p.m., the film’s director and stars stood onstage, enjoying their acclaim. But just five minutes later, Fremaux was urging attendees to file out quickly, reminding them to, “keep your masks on, wash your hands and get home before 9 p.m. to have a bowl of soup.”

    By 8:30 p.m. on the dot, the Grand Theatre Lumiere was empty.
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    making sounds mimicking those made in traditional martial arts movies?


    WATCH: Woman attacks drug store employee with ‘kung fu’ after reportedly being asked to wear a mask

    28 Oct, 2020 14:50 / Updated 1 day ago


    Screenshot: © Twitter / @Rickyfitts829

    Shocking video shared online purports to show a woman attacking a female Shoppers Drug Mart employee in Ontario, Canada while proudly proclaiming to know “kung fu.”

    According to comments online, the woman was allegedly told to wear a mask, at which point she became hostile.

    In the video, the woman hurls racist abuse at the employee, who appears to be of Asian descent, before attacking her and making sounds mimicking those made in traditional martial arts movies.



    “I know you know martial arts, so do I!” the alleged attacker says. As the employee repeatedly tries to usher the woman out of the store, she then becomes even more agitated, verbally abusing the staff member before threatening her with a piece of tissue which she claims is covered in her blood.

    “I just used you to demonstrate to the f**king officers, I know martial arts!” before exiting the Ontario store.

    Security reportedly arrived shortly after the incident, but it is unclear what became of the attacker, though there has been no official confirmation of the incident by police.

    Understandably, people online were outraged by the woman’s apparent racist behavior and flouting of coronavirus precautions.

    “Won’t follow the rules to wear a mask but won’t go out the exit cause it was an entrance? Mmmkay,” wrote one bemused commenter on Reddit, referring to the fact that the woman was willing to adhere to the entry and exit system in the store.

    “Kudos to the manager. I think she handled it well but I admit that police would have been called and charges would have filed if I were her,” added another.

    The incident evoked others’ misanthropic side, leading to comment such as: “People are f**king nuts man. I hate this planet.”

    Others chose to make light of the situation, referencing the disco classic ‘Kung Fu Fighting’ by Jamaican vocalist Carl Douglas: “Everybody is Kung Fu fighting, Your mind becomes fast as lightning, Although the future is a little bit frightening.”

    Physical confrontations over the wearing of masks during the global coronavirus pandemic have become common around the world, as tensions boil over, often with extremely violent consequences
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    Let's talk about China's economy and Covid...

    Singles Day: Alibaba sales blitz rakes in $75 billion as Chinese shake off Covid-19
    2020 Updated
    By Sherisse Pham, CNN Business

    Updated 9:31 PM ET, Wed November 11, 2020
    Chinese government halts Ant Group's giant IPO

    Chinese government halts Ant Group's giant IPO 02:35
    Hong Kong (CNN Business)China's annual Singles Day online shopping bonanza regularly hauls in tens of billions of dollars for Alibaba and other e-commerce and retail companies in China. This year, it's taking on new meaning as a showcase for the country's success in battling the Covid-19 pandemic.

    Alibaba (BABA) said on Thursday that the annual sales frenzy broke records again, raking in 498.2 billion yuan (roughly $75 billion). The total includes an earlier three-day period that was added to boost post-pandemic sales.
    Compared to the same timeframe as last year, this year's haul represents an increase of 26%, the company said.
    "China's economy has seen a strong recovery and Chinese consumers' purchase behaviors have already returned to pre-pandemic levels, if not higher," according to Xiaofeng Wang, analyst with market research firm Forrester..
    China reported positive economic growth for the second quarter in a row last month, underlining how quickly the world's second-largest economy has recovered from the pandemic.
    For brands and retailers scrambling to recover from months of shuttered shops and consumers hunkered down indoors, the lucrative Chinese shopper is a much-needed bright spot. Many companies "are doubling down" on their Singles Day sales events, according to Wang.
    A survey from market research firm Oliver Wyman found that 86% of Chinese consumers are willing to spend the same as or more than what they did during last year's Singles Day.
    Chinese shoppers "continue to spend like crazy," said Oliver Wyman partner Jacques Penhirin, who led the survey.
    The remaining 14% of survey respondents said they will spend less on Singles Day, because the pandemic had brought too much uncertainty for them.
    Penhirin predicted the event would be massive for participating brands and retailers, because shoppers are using it as an opportunity to treat themselves.
    It's been a strange year for Chinese consumers. They saved money during an unpredecented lockdown earlier this year, but they aren't traveling, said Penhirin.
    So shoppers are approaching Singles Day with an indulgent mindset. For example, a shopper who usually buys Maybelline makeup, he said, might instead spend a bit more to buy stuff from Yves Saint Laurent on sale.
    "Now it's time to be indulgent," Penhirin said.

    Glitzy stars and blockbuster growth
    Singles Day regularly racks up bigger sales than Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined.
    The event — also known as Double 11 — is pegged to China's informal, anti-Valentine's Day holiday that celebrates people who aren't in relationships. It takes place on November 11, a date that was chosen because it is written as four ones, or singles.
    Alibaba started offering Singles Day discounts in 2009 and has since turned the event into a bonanza of online shopping.
    Other Chinese e-commerce platforms like JD.com (JD), Pinduoduo (PDD) and Red, as well as regular brick-and-mortar stores also take part. Rival JD.com's event lasts almost two weeks — longer than Alibaba's. JD said on Thursday that it also set a new sales record of 271.5 billion yuan ($41 billion) during the event, growing 33% compared to last year.
    The event has also gained traction outside China: Alibaba's Southeast Asia subsidiary Lazada offers Double 11 discounts in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam.

    In China, Alibaba once again held a glitzy live concert counting down the hours until the main sales day starts. Celebrities often make appearances at the so-called 11.11 Gala, usually to hawk their own brands and products.
    Last year's headline performer was singer Taylor Swift. This year, it's Katy Perry, who was virtually piped into a Shanghai arena late Tuesday evening.
    This year, the company added an extra three days of sales — which took place from November 1 through 3 — because of the pandemic, according to Alicia Yap, managing director at Citigroup Global Markets Asia.
    A few more days of huge discounts help "brands or merchants recoup lost sales during the lockdown and [helps] global brands gain access to the stronger demand from Chinese consumers," Yap wrote in a note last week.

    Trends for this unprecedented year
    Livestreaming is expected to be a "key growth driver," for this year's Double 11, said Wang, of Forrester.
    Livestreaming had been around in China for years, but really took off during lockdown.
    It's like the Shopping Channel or QVC on steroids: Shoppers tune in to watch influencers peddling everything from cars to mangoes, and can score big discounts during the live streams.
    Wang also expects luxury goods will sell really well, because Chinese usually buy them while traveling overseas.
    "When pandemic makes international travel impossible, consumers will pivot these purchases domestically and particularly online," she said. "That's also why it's the first year that luxury brands are heavily involved in Singles Day."
    Oliver Wyman found that while foreign brands continue to dominate popular Singles Day categories such as cosmetics and infant formula, a growing number of Chinese shoppers will buy local brands of products like electronics and smartphones this year.
    "It's not patriotism ... it's just the technology, design and quality are better, therefore there is just more confidence" in Chinese brands, Penhirin said.
    Another reason Chinese are buying local is because some remain cost conscious post-pandemic, according to analysts at consultancy Bain & Company.
    Shoppers, for example, may view Apple's (AAPL) iPhone as too expensive, and instead buy slightly cheaper devices from Huawei or Xiaomi that they believe are comparable in design and technology.

    Alibaba's Jack Ma out of favor with Beijing
    There was an added shadow over the event for Alibaba and its billionaire founder Jack Ma. Last week, Chinese regulators slammed the brakes on the highly anticipated IPO of Ant Group, Alibaba's financial affiliate, at the eleventh hour. Regulators cited "major issues" that might cause Ant "not to meet the listing conditions or disclosure requirements."
    Ma publicly criticized Chinese regulators for stifling innovation, which industry watchers noted may have also played a role in the IPO getting pulled.
    Even though many other online platforms and stores take part in Singles Day, it is still closely tied to Alibaba. And recent criticism of the annual event by government groups and state media could signal that Ma is still out of favor with Beijing.
    The Chinese government has said it is eager to stimulate domestic consumption to spur the country's economic growth. And yet the China Consumers Association, a state-backed national consumer rights group, urged for "rational consumption" during the upcoming Double 11 shopping season, according to statements it issued last week.
    State-run news network CCTV called for "fewer tricks" by shopping platforms during the Singles Day shopping season, saying they should not cheat consumers.
    But a spat between a tech billionaire and Beijing regulators likely won't affect how Chinese consumers shop, according to Penhirin of Oliver Wyman.
    "Consumers don't care, honestly," he said, adding that while financial markets might be paying attention to the drama, consumers will think that "as long as I get a good deal, it's none of my business."

    -- Laura He contributed to this report.
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  15. #270
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    If I looked like Tom, I'd never wear a mask. Just sayin...

    Dec 15, 2020 4:42pm PT
    Tom Cruise Tears Into ‘Mission: Impossible 7’ Crew for Not Following COVID-19 Safety Protocols


    By Ellise Shafer


    AP
    Tom Cruise expressed his frustration with crew members on the set of “Mission: Impossible 7” after he saw them breaking COVID-19 guidelines, two sources close to the production confirm to Variety.

    As first reported by The Sun, after Cruise saw two crew members standing too close to one another in front of a computer screen, he told the crew: “If I see you do it again you’re f—ing gone.”

    In audio obtained by The Sun, Cruise can be heard saying: “We are the gold standard. They’re back there in Hollywood making movies right now because of us. Because they believe in us and what we’re doing. I’m on the phone with every f—ing studio at night, insurance companies, producers and they’re looking at us and using us to make their movies. We are creating thousands of jobs, you motherf—ers. I don’t ever want to see it again. Ever!”

    Cruise has been strict about enforcing COVID-19 guidelines on the set of the film in Britain, and scolded the crew for taking advantage of the safe environment that the team in place helped create.

    “You can tell it to the people who are losing their f—ing homes because our industry is shut down. It’s not going to put food on their table or pay for their college education. That’s what I sleep with every night – the future of this f—ing industry!” Cruise said. “So I’m sorry, I am beyond your apologies. I have told you, and now I want it, and if you don’t do it, you’re out. We are not shutting this f—ing movie down! Is it understood? If I see it again, you’re f—ing gone.”

    Cruise pointed out specific members of the crew, telling one “you’re going to cost him his job.”

    “Am I clear? Do you understand what I want? Do you understand the responsibility that I have? Because I will deal with your reason, and if you can’t be reasonable and I can’t deal with your logic, you’re fired,” Cruise continued. “That’s it. That is it. I trust you guys to be here.”

    “Mission: Impossible 7” was recently hit with delays in October when 12 people on set in Italy tested positive for COVID-19. Production resumed a week later and returned to the U.K. two weeks ago.

    “Mission: Impossible 7” is directed by Christopher McQuarrie and set to release on Nov. 19, 2021.

    Listen to the full audio here.

    Adam B. Vary contributed to this report.
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