Upset that she was not warned about the 20 minutes of commercials prior to the movie, Chen Xiaomei of Beijing sued the Polybana International Cinema in the northern city of Xian for “wasting her time.”
According to London’s “The Guardian,” Xiaomei attended a showing of “Aftershock,” director Feng Xiaogang’s hit Chinese drama about a mother’s reunion with her daughter 30 years after the 1976 earthquake that destroyed the Chinese city of Tangshan. She said the theater did not inform customers of the excessive length of the ads.
The People’s Court of Xian accepted Xiaomei’s case but did not confirm when the case would be heard.
Xiaomei asked for a full refund of the ticket (35 yuan) and an extra 35 yuan in compensation for her emotional damge from watching the ads as well as a written apology from the cinema. She also wanted a commitment from the theater that in the future ads would not run longer than 5 minutes.
For those of us who have been sitting through endless commercials and trailers for years, the consensus is that Xiaomei is letting the theater owners off easy.
