Deadpool release denied in China

China is the market, after all, that helped add $300m to the global gross of Transformers: Age Of Extinction, for instance, and also turned Terminator: Genisys into a mild hit past year. The country, which lacks a rating system like the USA that gauges the appropriateness of films for certain audiences, uses a pass/fail method when deciding whether or not to play foreign films. But without China’s box office dollars, Deadpool will need to be an even stronger word of mouth hit – which makes its success in two surprise screenings on January 18 more encouraging.

Fox and Marvel had no comment to Variety yesterday. Just because a movie is rated R here doesn’t mean it automatically gets the ban hammer in China. Instead, Ryan Reynolds introduced the entire film in NY, while co-stars T.J.

The country’s media regulator, the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television (SAPPRFT), approves or denies releases for all film imports – and reportedly found that Deadpool was ineligible for release. “The goal of this petition is to add a short monologue at the start of the upcoming Deadpool movie in which Ryan Reynolds vulgarly berates anyone who signed said petition and calls them bad names”.

Deadpool’s promotional campaign has primarily focused on poking fun at everything, from romcoms to superhero films in general.

The film, which also stars Morena Baccarin as Wilson’s girlfriend Vanessa, and Serbian actor Stefan Kapičić as mutant Colossus, forms part of of Fox’s X-Men series, and is released on February 12.

It looks like we’ll have the same problem presented on the run-up to every Valentine’s Day: will they give us what we want, or make us hunt for the receipt?