No China For Ghostbusters Reboot

The movie’s first trailer, released in March, has received more than 266,000 thumbs up reviews on YouTube but 933,000 users gave it a thumbs down.

According to THR, the decision not to show the film isn’t because of China’s censorship of movies that “promote cults or superstition”. The translated title for the Ghostbusters remake is a play on the local name for the original 1984 film, which also didn’t receive a theatrical release in China, but is popularly known as “Ghost Catcher Dare Die Team” around the country.

Facing ban: Ghostbusters (from left) Leslie Jones, Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig and Kate McKinnon. Dead Man’s Chest, which has a ghost-centric plot, was denied a release there in 2006.

The film comes thirty years after the beloved original franchise took the world by storm.

But after The Hollywood Reporter’s story was published, conflicting reports materialised in other media outlets.

The studio has big expectations for the film in Asia. However, the new version switched the first few characters, now reading 超能敢死队, or “Super Power Dare Die Team”.

China, the second-largest film market in the world after the United States, has been a huge help in the global box office of other summer releases this year, including “Warcraft” which has earned $220.8 million in China to date but in the USA only $46.6 million.

Paul Feig’s Ghostbusters reboot has been enjoying generally decent/good reviews (you can check out ours here), and looks set for a very respectable opening weekend at the USA box office – but THR is reporting on some news that might just put a dampener on the positivity parade.

Deadline said the studio was not planning to submit the Ghostbusters reboot to China’s cultural authorities until the coming week.

The sequel, 1989’s Ghostbusters II, grossed just over $US200 million.