I believe it's still done for so-called in-flight entertainment.
So when I said the problem was China, I didn't mean the Chinese market, I meant that a huge amount of money currently being spent financing film entertainment comes from groups like this. They kill these kinds of things before they ever get financed.
Most folks don't talk about the money side of movies. It's nothing like talking about which star is in rehab or where the MCU is heading with its reboot. But at the end of the day, that's the thing driving content creation.
Because its more cost effective to consider the whole market when making the movie to start with.
> I believe it's still done for so-called in-flight entertainment
In-flight entertainment isn't way down the list of money drivers. “Chinese first-run sales” is a lot higher. So the power of the latter on how movies are initially crafted is big, while the former is negligible.