Sony’s latest film Uncharted starring Tom Holland and Mark Wahlberg will open in China on March 14th. The mystery surrounds the lack of a China run for Spider-Man: No Way Home. Holland is finally set to appear on Chinese movie screens again. This time it will be for Sony’s video game adaption of Uncharted and not his huge blockbuster hit Spider-Man: No Way Home. The film, based on the popular Playstation game series Naughty Dog and since receiving the March 14th release date in China, now opened in 15 other international markets last weekend earning $22 million. It debuts in North America this Friday, February 18. 

China’s film regulators have cut back markedly on the number of U.S. film titles allowed into their theater market, which compromised the world’s largest box office in 2021. Last year, only 20 revenue-sharing U.S. titles were released in Chinese cinemas, compared to the average of 30 to 40 titles per year- prior to the pandemic. The lack of a Chinese release date for the last five Marvel movies (Black Widow, Eternals, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Venom: Let There Be Carnage, and Spider-Man: No Way Home) has been a subject of speculation given how enormously lucrative the Marvel franchise has been in China. 

The movies set for release in China so far in 2022 are titles with mid-to small-size earning expectations rather than tentpoles: Disney’s Death on the Nile on February 19, Woody Allen’s troubled 2018 film A Rainy Day in New York on February 25, and, now, Uncharted on March 14. The Batman will open on March 18.