China will rerelease Avengers and Avatar to revive cinemas after its coronavirus lockdown
China is hoping blockbuster movies like Avengers: Endgame can bring people back to cinemas now COVID-19 is under relative control.
While the world reels from the coronavirus outbreak, China is in the process of bringing its country back to life. Part of that process involves resuscitating China's increasingly important cinema industry. In order to do that, it's bringing back the big guns, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
A source at one of China's nationwide cinema operators told the publication that movies from the Avengers series, Christopher Nolan movies such as Inception and Interstellar, and -- get this -- Avatar will be brought back in an attempt to lure an understandably cautious Chinese public back to cinemas.
In the last few months China has implemented a strict lockdown of its citizens in the wake of the coronavirus, but those regulations are being relaxed after China has begun reporting very few new cases compared to previous months.
One of the most interesting parts: If these movies do well at the Chinese box office, it could revive the eternal battle for the global box office champion. Avengers: Endgame is currently the highest grossing movie of all time at $2,797,800,564. But Avatar is close behind at $2,790,439,000, according to Box Office Mojo. That's a gap of just $7 million. If Avatar somehow finds itself outperforming Avengers: Endgame during these events, it could possibly usurp the existing king.