"Django Unchained" was announced as the first Quentin Tarantino film to receive a theatrical release in China, but the director had to make some small tweaks to make that a reality.
As reported by THR, Tarantino adjusted the "vibrant hue and explosive splatter" of the bloody violence in "Django Unchained" to appease Chinese sensibilities.
In an interview with Southern Metropolis Daily, Zhang Miao, director of Sony Pictures' Chinese branch, said Tarantino "agreed on making slight adjustments to the film for different markets -– and this adjustment for him is progress rather than a compromise." As THR notes, the "Django Unchained" running time remains unaltered by the fixes.
"Django Unchained" has become a worldwide sensation since its release last December. The film has earned over $254 million in international ticket sales, giving it a global cume of over $416 million.
U.S. films making adjustments for release in China is far from surprising at this point. Earlier this month, Paramount executives reportedly suggested an edit to "World War Z" that took speculative blame for the film's depicted zombie apocalypse away from China. Disney and Marvel, meanwhile, added an entire sequence to "Iron Man 3" for the film's Chinese release, complete with a supporting role for acclaimed Chinese actress Fan Bing Bing. Relativity did something similar with the teen comedy "21 and Over," cutting together different bookends for the film that changed the project's meaning.
"'21 & Over,' in China, is sort of a story about a boy who leaves China, gets corrupted by our wayward, Western partying ways and goes back to China a better person,” co-writer and co-director Scott Lucas said to The Los Angeles Times.
The reason for this enhanced focus on Chinese moviegoers? Money. In 2012, China surpassed Japan as the highest grossing international provence, with $2.7 billion in ticket sales. That represented a leap of 36 percent from 2011, and makes China the second biggest market outside of the U.S. and Canada.
For more on "Django Unchained," head over to THR.
[via THR]
