Marvel films will once again get Chinese releases after a four-year hiatus from one of the biggest markets in the world.
Disney announced the change on Chinese social media platform Weibo and provided local release dates for upcoming Marvel films Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.
The last Marvel film to get a release in China was Spider-Man: Far from Home in July 2019 — though that film was co-distributed with Sony. Soon after, the Chinese government banned all films from the popular superhero franchise.
A total of eight Marvel films did not get a Chinese release over that period, though the delayed release of the Black Panther sequel will bring that number down to seven. The ban likely cost Disney hundreds of millions of dollars, at least based on past Chinese box office revenues.
In 2018, the first Black Panther, for example, grossed over $105 million in China, or nearly 8 percent of its worldwide box office sales. Ant-Man and the Wasp, meanwhile, pulled in a whopping 19 percent of worldwide sales from China.
While Chinese leaders have never explained its reasoning for the ban, the decision came amid heightened geopolitical tensions between China and the U.S.
