Crawdads Sing a hopeful lament

Nation's cinema industry pins hopes on high-grossing Hollywood romance thriller to lead a resurgence in fortunes, Xu Fan reports.

Although China's movie market has been sluggish for a long time due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, it's hoped that a slew of new movies will help to reignite the enthusiasm of theatergoers.

On the heels of the Japanese animated feature Detective Conan: The Bride of Halloween, high-grossing Hollywood romance flick Where the Crawdads Sing opened across Chinese mainland on Friday, more than four months after it was released in the United States.

Starring actress Daisy Edgar-Jones as Kya Clark, a young woman who grows up alone in the marshlands of North Carolina, the movie sees the protagonist caught in the middle of a murder investigation when one of the two men with whom she is romantically involved is found dead, making her the prime suspect.