![]() ![]() “I think it’s obviously a very complicated situation and I’m not an expert,” she says now, cautious in the extreme. Liu, who has American co-citizenship from her time in the U.S., was harshly criticized around the world for supporting oppression. Her action was seen by critics of the Chinese government as supporting police brutality soon after, the hashtag #BoycottMulan started trending on Twitter. In August, Liu stirred up a major controversy when she reposted a pro-police comment on Chinese platform Weibo (where she has more than 66 million followers) at the height of the violence in Hong Kong. The film also has tested the ability and tolerance of Disney - which aims to be ideologically neutral - in managing global political fallout. For the new film, the plan was to counter piracy by releasing the movie in China the same day as the rest of the world, a strategy that’s no longer possible. By the time Mulan reached theaters in late February 1999, most children had returned to school after the Chinese New Year holiday and pirated copies were widely available. ![]() Part of the reason is that the Chinese government stalled its premiere for nearly a year because of lingering anger over Disney’s 1997 release of Kundun, Martin Scorsese’s Dalai Lama movie that dealt with China’s occupation of Tibet. While the original 1998 Mulan was a critical and commercial hit, garnering a Golden Globe and Oscar nomination and grossing more than $300 million worldwide ($475 million today), it faltered at the Chinese box office. “It would really be a loss for me if I let the pressure overtake my possibilities,” says the actress, who learned English when she lived in New York as a child for four years with her mother, a dancer, after her parents’ divorce.Įven before the outbreak of the virus, Mulan - the first Disney-branded film with an all-Asian cast and the first to be rated PG-13 (for battle scenes) - would have marked one of the studio’s riskiest live-action films to date. Liu, who is enveloped in her own storm of controversy based on a political social media post about the Hong Kong protests, says she is trying hard not to think about all that. Of course, this puts added pressure on the $200 million budgeted film - the priciest of Disney’s recent live-action remakes - to perform in the U.S. ![]()
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