Sony executives breathed a sigh of relief when “Uncharted,” a big-budget adaptation of the popular video game, secured a release date in China.

The Chinese government, which has absolute control over which movies play in its theaters (and when they debut), has recently been ultra-selective about the non-Chinese films it allows to screen in the country’s tens of thousands of venues. As a result, many of Hollywood’s biggest pandemic-era releases, such as “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” and “Eternals,” weren’t granted access to Chinese movie theaters. That absence has wound up costing those movies tens — and in some cases hundreds — of millions of dollars in box office revenues.

“Getting any blockbuster into China right now feels like a big deal,” says Jeff Bock, a box office analyst with Exhibitor Relations.

But just because “Uncharted” is set to open in China...