Not only is the big Transformers: Age of Extinction
happening in Hong Kong, along with music by Imagine Dragons and all, Shanghai is also getting a piece of robot action. According to
The Hollywood Reporter, the Shanghai International Film Festival will be closing with the upcoming Michael Bay movie. And
in other (actually quite clever marketing) news for Chinese fans, currently preparing for the college entrance exams, main human cast members Mark Wahlberg, Nicola Peltz and Jack Reynor have recorded wishes of good luck! Check out the videos and news pieces below.
No one can accuse the 17th Shanghai International Film Festival of lacking in diversity or international appeal.
The festival in China’s financial hub and most cosmopolitan city will open with the restored classic Two Stage Sisters, a film from 1964 about two actresses in pre-revolutionary China, and close with a movie from half a century later that is almost its total opposite -- Transformers: Age of Extinction.
In an alternative marketing approach, cast members of Transformers: Age of Extinction, including Mark Wahlberg, have posted videos in China wishing nearly 10 million high-school students good luck with their college entrance exams.
It is hard to overstate the importance of these tests in China, which take place this weekend. In a country where education is one of the most highly prized assets, getting into one of China’s top universities is a national obsession.
The whole country goes respectfully silent during the exams. Flights are re-routed, and people are banned from honking car horns near the exam rooms nationwide. Outside the exam halls, anxious parents wait, many having spent weeks attending temples to make offerings to ensure success. Exam hall monitors are not allowed to wear high heels or perfume for fear of distracting the students.
Transformers: Age of Extinction will open in China day-and-date with its June 27 U.S. release, a week after its world bow in Hong Kong. That will be after an estimated 9.39 million high-school students take the university entrance exam this year, an increase of 3 percent over last year.