Fan Bingbing will return to the screen on Friday with the online release of “Green Night,” six years after a significant fall from grace due to a tax scandal.
At the height of her career in 2018, Fan was a major figure in Chinese cinema, known for a series of blockbusters and high-profile endorsements. However, she vanished from the public eye for several months, only to reappear in October of that year with an apology following a hefty fine from authorities in China amounting to nearly $70 million in unpaid taxes and penalties.
The scandal effectively suspended Fan’s film career in China, the second-largest movie market globally. Despite this, she avoided criminal charges and maintained her public presence by launching a beauty product line, Fan Beauty.
In “Green Night,” Fan stars as a Chinese woman who collaborates with a young South Korean woman to escape oppression. The film emphasizes themes of “women helping women and women redeeming women,” a sentiment she expressed at the Busan International Film Festival last year. “Some of my experiences and some stories in recent years are integrated into the character I present in the movie,” she noted.
Fan has not provided further comments regarding her return. Reflecting on her hiatus, she shared that it allowed her to have “time to ground” herself.
The tax scandal began with allegations that Fan was paid significantly more than reported for her film work, leading to a broader investigation into the entertainment industry’s tax practices in China, where the use of dual contracts is common to evade taxes.
In her 2018 apology on Weibo, Fan expressed her remorse, stating, “I have had deep and profound self-reflection. I feel shamed and guilty for what I have done.”
While “Green Night” has not been released in mainland China, it appears that many users have accessed it through unofficial channels. A Chinese platform, Douban, reported that approximately 38,000 users had viewed the film as of Thursday.