(Global Times) The Shape of Water, the biggest winner at this year's Oscars, is set to hit theaters in the Chinese mainland on Friday. The latest winner of the Academy Award for Best Picture introduced into the market since The Artist in 2012, Guillermo del Toro's human-monster romance looks like it may become the highest-earning Best Picture winner in a decade.
Sitting on pre-sales of more than 7 million yuan ($1.1m) on Maoyan - one of China's biggest film ticket-selling platforms - by Thursday, The Shape of Water faces strong competition from the debut of game-turned-movie reboot Tomb Raider, the pre-sales of which sat at 17 million yuan on Thursday.
On Chinese review platform Douban, however, more than 96,000 users have clicked on "want-to-see" for The Shape of Water, while the number of users anticipating Tomb Raider sits at around 14,700.
"Only a man with childlike innocence and an extremely romantic heart could write a story about a group of marginalized people coming together to fight against a dark world. It's nearly impossible to not be moved by such a story," writes one of the most popular comments on Douban.
The fantasy drama has an average ration of 7.3/10 on the platform, better than 62 percent of the fantasy movies on the site.
Censors' black mini-dress
The fact that The Shape of Water's mainland release date was set even before the Oscars ceremony earlier this month seems to suggest that its Chinese distributer are very confident in the film.
A poster for the film made to look like a traditional Chinese ink painting and a Chinese edition of the film's theme song were released online earlier this week to help build buzz for the film.
Tong Dawei and Guan Yue, a famous star couple in China, appeared at the film's Chinese premiere in Beijing as the film's ambassadors. Though the film's director Guillermo del Toro couldn't make it to the premiere due scheduling conflicts, he recorded a video message for his Chinese fans.
Since there are quite a number of R-rated scenes containing violence and nudity in the film, just how much of the original movie would be kept for the Chinese release has been a topic of hot discussion among Chinese moviegoers.
The Wednesday premiere revealed that at about 123 minutes in length, the film is almost the same as the original. Overall, around a minute has been cut from the film in total, with the cuts mainly focusing on dealing with the nudity in the film. In addition to cuts, the Chinese editors have also come up with a creative solution for dealing with some of the nudity. In one scene, in which the mute heroine Eliza stands naked at a bathroom door with her butt to the camera, the editors have covered the actress's nude back and buttocks with a black shape cut to look like a mini-dress.
As to the numerous violent scenes in the film, these have, for the most part, survived uncut.
Though some analysts think the monstrous hero in the film might help draw monster lovers, some in the Chinese film industry who have shown a blunt dislike for the Oscar-winning movie are more lukewarm on how it will perform in China.
Dai Jinhua, a renowned Chinese film scholar from Peking University, pointed out in a recent interview with cultural platform Moveable Type that The Shape of Water "is full of clichés."
"I think it will be difficult for The Shape of Water to perform well in China due to its unconventional genre," Chinese film critic Lin Chudong told the Global Times. "Mainstream Hollywood blockbusters with fancy visual effects are still far more popular with Chinese moviegoers."
"Also, according to historical box-office data, few Oscar Best Picture winners have performed well financially in the Chinese mainland market," he added.
Genre is key
While it's true that previous Oscar winners have not performed very well in China - outside of Titanic, which earned 360 million yuan when it came to China in 1998 - The Shape of Water is highly likely to perform far better than recent Oscar alumni. The last Best Picture winner released in China, The Artist, grossed a mere of 4.25 million yuan in 2012.
As to why previous Best Picture winners have not done well, the main factor seems to be the genre.
"Many of the Oscar Best Picture winners since 2000 were art house films… but in China, commercial films with fancy special effects and cool actions scenes prevail," wrote Gu Yan, editor-in-chief of movie platform Cine China, in a recent article.
However, fantasy films like The Shape of Water have a better track record in China than art house films.
For instance, fantasy film The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, the Best Picture winner at the 2004 Oscars, performed fairly well when it debuted in the Chinese mainland that same year. It raked in 86.3 million yuan to rank fourth on China's box-office chart that year.
Source: Global Times By Huang Tingting