China to beat Cannes for first premiere of 'Da Vinci Code'
(AP)
Updated: 2006-05-17 19:14
Unlike many places around the world, China has seen little of the controversy
that "The Da Vinci Code" - with its suggestion that Jesus married and fathered
children - has elicited elsewhere. Debates have been limited and Catholics are a
small minority, though some are upset about the movie.
A Catholic newspaper in the northern Chinese city of Shijiazhuang will run an
editorial this week calling on Catholics to boycott the film.
"We reject this film because it is not in accordance with the truth," said
Rev. Jean-Baptiste Zhang Shijiang, the director of the Hebei Faith Press
Newspaper, an officially approved weekly with a circulation of 50,000.
"I believe most faithful people will voluntarily reject it throughout the
country, although some may go to see it out of curiosity," Zhang said.
Government officials who monitor religious affairs have not spoken out
against the film, and Li of Columbia Tristar said it was approved without cuts
by China's censors on March 27.
"I think it's going to be less controversial in China because obviously
religions don't have much influence in China as they do elsewhere," said Wang.
"Da Vinci" is being given the widest release yet for a foreign film in China,
Li said, with some 393 prints sent to theaters, breaking the record of 380
prints set by "King Kong" last year.
"I think this is the film with the highest profile in China this year," Li
said.
She attributed the buzz to the popularity in China of the novel on which it
is based, Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code." Some 1.2 million legal copies have
been sold.
In an effort to foil film pirates, security at Chinese showings of "Da Vinci"
will be tight, with bags checked for video cameras, Li said.
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