Alex Garland’s ‘Civil War’ Lands China Release Date

Patrick Brzeski
·2 min read
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Alex Garland’s hit dystopian thriller Civil War has landed a potentially lucrative theatrical release in China. Chinese company Huahua Media acquired the local rights to the film and will distribute it in partnership with Alibaba Pictures on June 7. The plans mark a significant milestone for the tastemaking mini-major A24. It’s the influential studio’s very first theatrical opening in China, the world’s second-largest film market.

Since its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, Civil War has earned $65 million in North America and $108 million worldwide.

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Depicting a journey across a dystopian future America, Civil War follows a team of military-embedded journalists as they race against time to reach DC before rebel factions descend upon the White House. The film features an ensemble cast led by Oscar-nominee Kirsten Dunst, including Cailee Spaeny, Nick Offerman, Stephen Henderson and Wagner Moura.

Coming during a U.S. election year, the dystopian film about political division spawning the collapse of American democracy has spawned a torrent of think pieces. Impressively, however, it’s managed to appeal to audiences across the U.S. political spectrum.

Civil War makes for an interesting choice as the first A24 title to release in China. Any film hinting at potential social instability in the country is usually rejected out of hand by Beijing’s notoriously strict film censors. But dystopian chaos in the United States, it’s now clear, is a perfectly acceptable topic of portrayal among China’s regulators. That’s perhaps unsurprising considering that the circumstances of the film’s story would appear to gel with Beijing’s usual messaging about the superiority of China’s single-party system of governance over Western liberal democracy.

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