As I was preparing for my trip to Shanghai, one of the things I was looking forward to was seeing all of the Chinese movie advertisements. I expected to see billboards with Transformers plastered across them, possibly even a FF2 or SM3 ad that hadn’t been taken down yet. However, in the week I’ve been here, these are the only movie posters I’ve seen, and they’re on display at the theater, right outside the box office. One thing Shanghai isn’t lacking in is advertising - it’s everywhere, with ads plastered on anything possible, TVs mounted in kiosks on the street, people walking through the street with LCD displays hovering above their heads playing commercials, so the reason has to be a simple one. I’m probably jumping to conclusions, but the only reason for this that I can think of for the lack of entertainment ads is that, with the rampant pirating, it’s just not cost effective for studios to pump money into billboards and movie posters beyond point of purchase spots. A shame, really, because many of the existing ads are pretty neat and it would be cool to see some summer blockbuster adverts on the changing bus stop billboards.

At any rate, here’s a few posters that I shot at the mall. Should give you all an idea of what you’re hunting for next con season - I’m particularly fond of the one that looks like it’s advertising a Transformers/ Harry Potter double feature, but is really probably just encouraging people to see them both.

Spread the word!