Milestones, people. Milestones. Announced today over the wire, Shanghai is to host the WORLD PREMIER EVENT for a bonafide Hollywood blockbuster, the release of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales on Thursday, May 11. The occasion marks the first time a Hollywood movie will premiere in Mainland China, and Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, Geoffrey Rush, Javier Bardem, Brenton Thwaites, along with directors Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg, and producer Jerry Bruckheimer are winging their way across vast oceans to be with us for the gala.

*** Gonna be so crowded at Perry's with friggin' Johnny Depp and friggin' Orlando Bloom all up in that shit trying to get buckets. Friggin' tourists. Friggin' amateurs. Ahem. The occasion, of course, is perhaps yet another emblematic instance of China's increasing clout in the Hollywood blockbuster sausage factory. There's lots of think pieces on the internet about it -- here, here, and here -- I'm not going to get into it, you can do your own Googling. But perhaps also this might have something to do with Pirates of the Caribbean being a very lucrative Disney intellectual property that dovetails nicely with their actual property property out there in Pudong. Shanghai Disneyland, folks. ***

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