iQiyi Chinese Streamer Adds 17 Million Subscribers in First Quarter

Clayton Davis Senior Awards Editor Variety Awards Circuit section is the home for all awards news and related content throughout the year, featuring the following: the official predictions for the upcoming Oscars, Emmys, Grammys and Tony Awards ceremonies, curated by Variety senior awards editor Clayton Davis. The prediction pages reflect the current standings in the race and do not reflect personal preferences for any individual contender. As other formal (and informal) polls suggest, competitions are fluid and subject to change based on buzz and events. Predictions are updated every Thursday. Visit the prediction pages for the respective ceremonies via the links below:

LA’s Dances With Films Celebrates 26 Years of storytelling June 22-July 2 at the TCL Chinese Theater in Hollywood. 

EXCLUSIVE: Taost Entertainment, a London-based media production startup, has picked up Chinese distribution rights to the star-studded animated feature 10 Lives.

For years, the Disney Channel has been a breeding ground for young talent, churning out stars that have gone on to make their mark in the entertainment industry. From the likes of Shia LaBeouf and Demi Lovato to Selena Gomez and Miley Cyrus, the network has provided a platform for some of the biggest names in music and acting.

Chinese actress Zhou Dongyu, who is in Cannes with Anthony Chen’s Un Certain Regard title The Breaking Ice, has had a fairytale career trajectory. 

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Magic Fair, a Miami-Paris based indie sales company and Hong Kong- and Paris-based All Rights Entertainment have launched rights sales on upcoming feature animation “Pigsy,” directed by Chiu Li-Wei (“Barkley”) during the Cannes Film Festival’s Marche du Film. The film is a reimagining of the classic Chinese tale “Journey to the West.” The story follows a self-absorbed and lazy pig on a journey to lasting happiness. Set in a distant future, the film sees Pigsy embark on a deceitful quest for a better life, only to find that true happiness may be closer than he thinks. The production has recently added Taiwanese stars Greg Han, Liu Kuan-Ting, Harlem Yu, Tuo Tsung-Hua, Chung Hsin-Ling, Ivy Shao, Waa Wei and K.R. Bros. The film is to be completed in time for release at Chinese New Year in early 2024. Production is by the Netherland’s studio Submarine (“Where is Anne Frank,” TV series “Undone” Season 2, “Apollo 10 ½ : A Space Age Childhood”) with Taiwan’s Greener Grass (“GrX”) and Studio2 (“Barkley,” “Get the Hell Out,” “The Tag-Along”).

Rachel Seo Chinese folklore gets a Disney spin in “American Born Chinese,” an eight-episode series created by Kelvin Yu, which landed on Disney+ on Wednesday. An adaptation of the 2006 graphic novel by Gene Luen Yang, the series centers on Bay Area teenager Jin Wang (Ben Wang), who becomes entangled in a fantastical quest after a new classmate, Wei-Chen (Jimmy Liu), reveals himself to be the son of the Monkey King and recruits Jin to help him search for the Fourth Scroll. Featuring an all-star cast that includes Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan, Stephanie Hsu, Chin Han, Yann Yann Yeo and Sydney Taylor, “American Born Chinese” recontextualizes ancient history for modern audiences both familiar and unfamiliar with the original stories, bringing together the talents of some of the most prominent Asian actors, writers and directors in entertainment.

Alison Herman TV Critic A popular reading of superhero mania holds that it’s our era’s substitute for shared mythology; instead of Zeus shooting lightning bolts from Mount Olympus, we have Cyclops shooting beams from his eyeballs. So it’s fitting that the coming-of-age tale “American Born Chinese” streams on Disney+, the service that’s a one-stop shop for all things Marvel; Destin Daniel Cretton of “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings,” the first Marvel film to star an Asian American hero, even directs the pilot. But “American Born Chinese” flips the script: rather than use superheroes for modern-day mythmaking, it infuses centuries-old myths into genres (action, bildungsroman) now dominated by superheroes.

Chinese director Wei Shujun has just premiered his third film, neo-noir thriller Only The River Flows, in Cannes Un Certain Regard to positive reviews. 

Chinese director Wang Bing is more than content to take his time. His documentary Youth (Spring), which premiered in competition at Cannes last Thursday, runs three-and-a-half hours long. His second Cannes film, Man in Black, runs considerably shorter at a mere 60 minutes, but it too unfolds patiently.

The journey for Jin Wang in “American Born Chinese” couldn’t have begun at a more opportune time. The protagonist of Gene Luen Yang’s 2006 graphic novel — now a Disney’s eight-episode series from showrunner Kelvin Yu — springs forth when narratives with an Asian identity are stratospheric-high in demand and popularity.

South China Morning Post. “There was humiliating material against the People’s Liberation Army in two performances in the afternoon and evening of May 13, causing very bad social effects.”Though the notice did not elaborate specifically on what the humiliating material was, reports on China’s social media said that Haoshi compared the PLA slogan “Fight to win, forge exemplary conduct” – a phrase coined by China’s president Xi Jinping in 2013 – to two dogs chasing a squirrel.

Wang Bing’s documentary, Youth (Spring), one of two in the main Cannes competition in nearly 20 years, takes an interesting stance in its portrayal of the garment workers living in harsh conditions in China’s clothing capital of Zhili City.

Cannes Film Festival features an unusually robust selection of documentaries, two in the Main Competition alone, where nonfiction films almost never appear. And if the ones that have screened in the festival’s first three days have anything in common, it’s scale.

Check the label on that garment hanging in your closet. If it reads “Made in China,” there’s a chance it was stitched together by one of the characters in Wang Bing’s documentary Youth (Spring), or someone like them.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief More than two million people turned out on Wednesday to watch “Fast X” in Chinese movie theaters, spending a combined $15.3 million on the film on its first day of release. That made the tenth film in the “Fast & Furious” franchise a clear winner at the Chinese box office in an unusual midweek release. And it put “Fast X” on course to be the biggest Hollywood film so far this year in the world’s second largest movie market. Provisional data from local data service Ent Group showed that the film also enjoyed $2.83 million from previews on Tuesday. That gives an estimated $18.2 million total at the end of its first official day of release.

Naman Ramachandran Emerging star from Hong Kong, Isabella Wei, headlines Silent D Pictures’ comedy-drama “High Wire.” The film follows the story of Go-wing, a British-Chinese takeaway girl who discovers her inner strength and artistic bravery when a circus comes to her small English town. As Go-wing navigates the challenges of her dual cultural identity, she finds herself at a crossroads and must decide between conforming to societal expectations or forging her own path towards her dreams. The film pays homage to the first and second generations of Chinese immigrants and their journey to adapt to life in England whilst facing issues of systemic racism and discrimination.

After three long years of being cut off from the rest of the world due to pandemic travel restrictions, China’s film industry will be out in force at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. 

“certain content” from its streaming platforms as a cost-cutting effort, and said it would be producing “lower volumes of content.”Disney stock fell $8.94, or 8.8%, to $92.20, with nearly three times the number of shares traded in the first hour as in a typical full-day session. It saw by far the largest decline of the 30 stocks in the Dow Jones Industrial Average amid a broad market slump that saw the index fall 1.1%.Disney stock hit an annual low $84.07 in December, and ended Wednesday’s session up 13.7% since the start of the year.After the markets closed Wednesday, the House of Mouse reported net income of $1.27 billion and adjusted earnings per share of 93 cents, topping Wall Street’s expectations for 89 cents per share.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer Disney+ shed another 4 million subscribers in the first three months of 2023, marking the Disney-owned streamer’s second consecutive quarterly drop after closing 2022 with its first-ever decline. On the bright side, the Mouse House also managed to narrow its streaming business losses by $400 million, down 26% year over year. On Wednesday, CEO Bob Iger and Co. beat Wall Street estimates for Disney’s quarterly earnings and revenue due to an impressive Jan.-March showing at the company’s theme parks. That win comes during a fiscal Q2, which concluded April 1, plagued by companywide layoffs, a looming (and now active) writers strike, and a turf war with Florida Gov. Rick DeSantis.