‘Avengers: Endgame’ is breaking Chinese box office records — and moviegoers

Say what you will about the Avengers franchise but it’s been an undeniably fun ride for its devoted fans, and the final installment, Avengers: Endgame, is set to premiere across the U.S. this weekend. The highly-anticipated superhero movie has already hit theaters in China, where it had a record-breaking debut, raking in more than $100 million on its opening day Wednesday.

In celebration of this significant cultural event, we collected a series of Avengers-related stories from China. This is a spoiler-free post, so feel free to read on. We’ll keep adding stories as they come in.

Avengers fan ends up in ER after crying her heart out during the movie

21-year-old university student Xiaoli 小丽 attended the Endgame premiere to “avoid spoilers” (smart move!), but her excessive crying throughout the movie caused some breathing problems afterwards. She ended up spending the night in a hospital.

Some people are paying to join online groups to discuss Endgame’s plots instead of being complete jerks and leaking spoilers on the internet

Let’s get this straight: Spoilers suck. So this is a truly brilliant idea: an Avengers superfan in China has created online chat groups for people who have seen the movie to talk about it. The entry fee is 0.1 yuan ($0.015) and applicants are required to show their movie tickets before being accepted as members. These groups are advertised on the ecommerce platform Taobao. The product description reads, “Don’t be hard on yourself. You don’t have to shut your mouth.”

A surprisingly effective crossover event: Avengers and China’s blacklist of credit defaulters

Are you being sued for unpaid debt? Are you or people you know in the target audience for the Avengers? Well then, movie theaters in Lishui, Zhejiang Province have just the way to publicly shame you.

In collaboration with the local court, movie theaters in Lishui are attaching a video at the end of each screening of Endgame that shows a blacklist of more than 60 credit defaulters in the city. The clip includes their names, photos, and the amount they owe.

The practice has already seen some positive results. According to local officials, a man surnamed Lan 蓝, who has been on the list since 2017 over unpaid debt totaling 50,000 yuan ($7,250), recently paid his amount because his high school daughter was planning to see the movie with friends.

Romance scammer arrested on an Avengers movie date

Police in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, have reportedly arrested a con man (in Chinese) at a local movie theater where he took his girlfriend to see Avengers: Endgame on its opening day on April 24. The 32-year-old romance fraudster, who was accused by two women of approaching them on an online dating website and scamming them out of 400,000 yuan ($59,400), was spotted by people close to the matter when entering the theater with his new partner.

When police arrived, the movie had already started. It’s reported that in order not to ruin other viewers’ experience, the police waited outside the theater until the movie ended. A police officer later wrote on his WeChat Moment (equivalent of News Feed), “He was having a fun time watching the movie while I was painfully listening to it the whole time.”

Last Update: April 29, 2019