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Chinese historical drama ‘1921’ landed in second place worldwide.

Worldwide Box Office July 2-4 2021 RankFilm (Distributor) 3-day (World)Cume (World) 3-day (Int’l)Cume (Int’l)Territories 1 Fast & Furious 9 (Universal) $47.8m $491.5m $23.8m $374.4m 51 2 1921 (Various) $21.6m $45.7m $21.6m $45.7m 4 3 The Boss Baby: Family Business (Universal) $18.8m $18.8m $1.5m $1.5m 9 4 The Forever Purge (Universal) $16.3m $16.3m $3.5m $3.5m 23 5 Cruella (Disney) $11.5m $204.3m $9m $127.8m 44

Credit: Comscore, all figures estimates

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One of the most prominent Chinese propaganda films of the year is set for a flashy, state-sanctioned premiere as the opening night selection of the Shanghai Intl. Film Festival on Friday. The sweeping period drama “1921” will be celebrated despite recent nationalist blowback of the kind that over the past year has felled China releases for films like Chloe Zhao’s “Nomadland” and video game adaptation “Monster Hunter.”

Backed by Tencent Pictures and Shanghai Film Group, the film was developed as a tribute to China’s ruling Communist party for the 100th anniversary of its founding, which falls on July 1 — the day “1921” will hit theaters. The movie re-enacts the story of the Party’s early years.

As such, it was necessarily vetted by censors and producers with extraordinary care to ensure that it could in no way be deemed to send the wrong political message.

Even so, hot-blooded online...

The Shanghai International Film Festival (Shiff) will kick off this year with the Chinese propaganda film “1921” as its opening night gala. The announcement was made late Tuesday evening local time with just three days to go before the premiere.

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the founding of China’s ruling Communist Party on July 1, a key political date that for the past year already has sent censors into high alert and film companies scrambling to develop content lauding the Party’s history and achievements.

Shiff’s 24th annual iteration takes place just before the anniversary itself, running from June 11-20.

Its opening night will be used to showcase the star-studded, Tencent Pictures-backed retelling of the Party’s early history, which is set in Shanghai in the year 1921.

Although Shiff has historically been China’s most internationally minded festival by far, its choice to honor a propaganda...

An angelic chorus of young boys set the scene at a big Tencent press conference held last week to announce new production strategies and a huge slate of upcoming content.

“The blood which fills our chest has boiled over, we must struggle for the truth! Arise, slaves, arise, we shall be the masters of the world!” they warbled, singing the version of “The Internationale,” the Socialist anthem, translated into Chinese from Russian in the 1920s by a poet friend of Mao Zedong.

Though the song was also taken up in 1989 by the pro-democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square, it was here deployed as a segue into a half-hour presentation on one of the tech giant’s biggest upcoming film projects: “1921,” a blockbuster about the founding of the Chinese Communist Party intended as a tribute on the 100th anniversary of the occasion.

It’s no surprise that despite all the uncertainties of...

Kenny Chesney isn't a fan of all those tan-legs-and-bikini-tops songs on country radio, either. "In the last several years, a lot of the songs about women have been written in kind of an objectifying way," he says in a new interview with radio.com. "If you didn't wear cut-off jeans or a bikini top, or sit on a tailgate and drink, then you really weren't worthy, you didn't really add up." In response, the country superstar is including a heartfelt and respectful love letter to women in a song called "Wild Child" on his latest record, The Great Revival, which drops Sept.

With a rapidly expanding cinema audience, the biggest new films are being adapted for what is now the second largest box office in the world

There's a lesson to be learned from new teen comedy 21 & Over, though the abstract of that lesson will largely depend on where you see it. Catch it on one of the 300-odd UK screens it opened across yesterday, and witness a jocular salute to the redemptive power of youth, rebellion and getting fucked-up. Hold out for the film's debut in China later this month and you're in for an altogether more moralistic experience.

Along with a growing band of Hollywood innovators, the producers of 21 & Over have worked closely with the Chinese government to produce an alternate cut for their audiences, one in which the film's hero is refashioned as a Chinese exchange student who ultimately shakes off the rank delinquency of American college life and returns home a reformed character.

Concluding instalment in Hogwarts franchise postponed to make way for Beginning of the Great Revival: The Founding of a Party

The wizard Harry Potter is being forced to make his farewell as a pirate in Beijing because China is holding back the official version of the concluding episode in the Hogwarts franchise in favour of an epic celebrating the 90-year-old Communist party.

Counterfeit DVD hawkers are selling poor-quality copies of the Deathly Hallows 2 in the capital days after its release in foreign markets.

The original will not be screened for a fortnight, at least partly due to the priority put on the big-budget political epic Beginning of the Great Revival: The Founding of a Party, which brings together more than 150 Chinese stars, including Hollywood icon Chow Yun-fat, in a two-hour tale of the Communist party's roots.

With its depiction of the romances and idealism of a young Mao, the story...