LOS ANGELES — Walt Disney Co’s live-action remake of Mulan pulled in $23.2 million over the weekend at box offices in China, a slow start for the big-budget epic about a Chinese folk hero in its most important theatrical market.

The debut for Mulan fell short of director Christopher Nolan’s Tenet, which grossed $29.8 million in China a week earlier. Unlike Tenet, Mulan was tailored to draw big audiences in the country.

But Mulan, which cost $200 million to produce, was hit by political controversy and received mixed reviews in China. It had been set to debut in March until it was delayed by the coronavirus pandemic, which has limited moviegoing worldwide.

“That’s a disappointing debut,” said Jeff Bock, senior media analyst at Exhibitor Relations Co. “Disney made this film for Chinese audiences and they saw it pretty much fall flat.”

Mulan provoked a backlash on overseas social media, and calls for a boycott, over its star’s support of Hong Kong police and for being partly filmed in the Xinjiang region, where China’s clamp-down on ethnic Uighurs and other Muslims has been criticized by some governments and rights groups.

Chinese authorities told major media outlets not to cover the film’s release in the wake of the uproar, four people familiar with the matter told Reuters.

Total worldwide box office receipts for Mulan reached $37.6 million through Sunday for the seven territories where the film is playing.

Disney is trying to turn a profit on Mulan through an unusual release strategy because the pandemic has left many theaters shuttered.

The company made Mulan available for online viewing in the United States and other countries where the Disney+ streaming service is available.

In China and other countries where Disney+ does not operate, Disney is releasing Mulan in cinemas. Disney has not provided sales figures from streaming.

Starring big-name Chinese-born actors — Jet Li, Gong Li, Donnie Yen and Yifei Liu — Mulan was tailored to appeal to audiences in China, the world’s second-largest movie market.

But there was no major media build-up and no star-studded premier or red carpet launch.

Online reviewers in China seemed more concerned about the plot than the politics.

‘EXTREME REVIEWS’
The film was rated 4.7 out of 10 on China’s popular social media site Douban.

Some posters pointed out historical inaccuracies, including the use of buildings that only appeared hundreds of years after the film’s setting.

The movie’s “pre-sales started too late, and it got quite some extreme reviews before the premiere,” said Liu Zhenfei, an analyst with Maoyan.

“On top of the fact that it is impacted by piracy issues, because the storyline is Chinese, it faces higher expectations when shown in China,” he said.

The ticketing company predicted Mulan would likely take in less than 300 million yuan in ticket receipts during its entire run in China.

By comparison, The Eight Hundred, a patriotic movie about China’s fight against Imperial Japanese during World War Two, earned 141.3 million yuan on its first full day in August.

People coming out of the first screenings of Mulan said the politics had not put them off.

“We should not make art political,” said Shanghai cinema-goer Gao Wenxing, 23.

“As a Chinese person, I don’t think there is anything wrong with Liu Yifei’s action,” she added, referring to the actress who plays the Mulan and angered many with her support for police in Hong Kong at a time when the city was embroiled in unrest.

When asked in the past about the reaction to the film’s Xinjiang shooting, China’s foreign ministry has reiterated Beijing’s denial of the existence of re-education camps in the region, calling facilities there vocational and educational institutions and accusing anti-China forces of smearing its Xinjiang policy. — Reuters

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