20 Things You Didn't Know About Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope
1. It Didn't Premiere In China Until 2015
Tough though it might be to believe, A New Hope never actually had an official premiere in China due to the nation's intensely strict ban on western cultural influences at the time of its original release.
And though copies of the film became available on home video in the years that followed, the first Star Wars didn't get the full theatrical premiere treatment until 2015, almost 40 years after it first hit screens in the west.
The entire original trilogy was screened for the first time as part of the 2015 Shanghai International Film Festival.
The fact that Star Wars doesn't have decades of cultural penetration in China explains why even the recent sequel trilogy didn't drum up much business in the region - the fond nostalgia for the IP just isn't there.