Original Article By John F. Trent At BoundingIntoComics.com:
A new report claims that The Walt Disney Company and Marvel Studios will begin educating their actors and executives in order to placate communist China to ensure the release of future films in the country.
The report comes from The Hollywood Reporter’s Kim Masters and Alex Weprin as they covered an investor battle inside The Walt Disney Company pitting current CEO Bob Iger against former Marvel executive Ike Perlmutter and hedge fund manager Nelson Peltz, who wants a seat on Disney’s board.
Amid the report Masters and Weprin claim that future Marvel films will not feature any Chinese villains, but that “the talent will be well-schooled to watch their words.”
This report comes after The Walt Disney Company’s official Chinese social media accounts announced that Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and Anti-Man and the Wasp: Quantamania secured theatrical releases in China.
The Hollywood Reporter’s Patrick Brzeski reported on January 17th, “Marvel shared the surprise news Tuesday over its official Chinese social media accounts. The two titles will be the very first movies of Marvel’s Phase 4 to screen in China, as the last approved theatrical releases from the studio were Spider-Man: Far From Home and Avengers: Endgame, way back in early/mid-2019.”
YouTuber Yellowflash commented on this report from The Hollywood Reporter indicating Disney and Marvel stars will be educated to not offend communist China saying, “What a loser move this is.”
He continued, “It’s always Disney that does this s**t. Disney’s always willing to step back. This is all about making as much money as possible. And,, you know, I would rather these companies not to do this and not bend the knee to this country because they don’t really like us.”
“And making our movies less patriotic or changing things to make China happy just seems kind of backwards to me. It seems kind of backwards,” he asserted. “And other companies are moving forward saying, ‘We don’t really care that much.’ And then you’ve got Disney just salivating at the fact of censoring their own s**t so they could get it out in that country.”
“It seems kind of wrong, but Disney’s been morally bankrupt for a long time anyways. So I’m not really surprised,” he added.
Yellowflash would also suggest that the actors will act similar to John Cena did when he groveled to the Chinese and apologized to them when he referred to Taiwan as a country during a promotional event for Fast & Furious 9.
While doing an interview on the Taiwanese broadcasting network TVBS to promote the film, Cena stated that Taiwan would be “the first country to watch the film.”
He would later issue an apology in Mandarin on Weibo for claiming Taiwan was a country.
Cena’s apology was shared to Twitter by Joe Xu.
A translation of Cena’s apology was done by South China Morning Post. He stated, “Hi China, I’m John Cena. I’m in the middle of Fast & Furious 9 promotions. I’m doing a lot of interviews. I made a mistake in one of my interviews.”
Cena continued, “Everyone was asking me if I could use Chinese – [movie] staff gave me a lot of information, so there was a lot of interviews and information.”
“I made one mistake. I have to say something very, very, very important now. I love and respect China and Chinese people. I’m very, very sorry about my mistake,” said Cena.
He continued profusely apologizing, “I apologize, I apologize, I’m very sorry. You must understand that I really love, really respect China and the Chinese people. My apologies. See you.”
