Noticias

China’s summer box office (June 1-July 31) was down 40.9% year-on-year to $1.1bn (RMB7.6bn), despite July being the second highest month of 2024 boosted by the success of comedy drama Successor, according to consultancy Artisan Gateway.

July concluded with $757.3m (RMB5.4bn), only behind February’s takings of $1.6bn (RMB11.1bn) from a record-breaking Chinese New Year. But despite being the second-best month of the year to date, July was down 38.3% on the same period in 2023.

Family-themed feature Successor topped the month with $341m (RMB2.4bn), accounting for 45% of the monthly total. It is the summer season’s highest grossing film...

“Successor,” a Chinese-produced comedy drama about escape from poverty, dominated a big weekend at the Mainland China box office. The session also saw an impressive re-release for Japanese animation “Your Name” and Hollywood action film “Twisters” blown into instant irrelevance.

Data from consultancy firm Artisan Gateway showed “Successor” earning RMB633 million ($89.1 million) between Friday and Sunday in China. While this represented the film’s official first weekend, “Successor” finished Sunday with a cumulative total of RMB1.55 billion or $219 million.

That is due to two days of wide screenings a weekend earlier that were considered as previews (causing the title to be omitted from Comscore charts a week earlier) and an opportunistic pulling forward of its official release to Tuesday (July 16), allowing it to jump ahead of weaker titles in the market.

“Successor” is co-directed by Yan Fei and Peng Damo and stars Shen Teng, Ma Li, Shi Pengyuan, Sa Rina and Xiao Bochen.

“Successor,” a comedy drama film that has taken the Chinese box office by storm, is set for an international roll-out from early next month.

Rights to the film have been picked up by Cmc Pictures, the Chinese studio behind “The Meg” monster shark franchise. It will handle theatrical releases in North America, Australia, New Zealand, the U.K. and Benelux, rolling out from Aug. 2.

“Successor” charts the ups and downs of a poor dad and a hardworking mom, living in a broken yard and seemingly having fallen behind others on the road to prosperity.

The film only opened officially in Chinese theaters on Tuesday (July 16) and earned an estimated $21 million. But it finished its first day with an $89 million cumulative, thanks to wide-scale previews that caused it to dominate China’s most recent weekend charts. On each of Saturday and Sunday, the film enjoyed more than 140,000 screening sessions in China.

“Successor,” a Chinese-produced comedy drama about escape from poverty, opened on top of the mainland China box office over the latest weekend. “Despicable Me 4,” performed well, but landed only in third position.

Data from consultancy firm Artisan Gateway shows “Successor” earned RMB358 million ($50.4 million) between Friday and Sunday. The film charts the ups and downs of a poor dad and a hardworking mom, living in a broken yard and seemingly having fallen behind others on the road to prosperity.

According to an official synopsis, “Ma Chenggang and Ma Chunlan, ride their donkey to work and see their son, Ma Jiye, as their only hope of turning their fate around. Jiye is very promising, excelling academically every year. He is tough and determined. But as Jiye grows up, he perceives that the people around him are becoming more and more strange.”

The film is co-directed by Yan Fei and Peng Damo and stars Shen Teng,...

Hong Kong-based Mei Ah Entertainment brings a slate of new projects to Filmart, featuring stars including Shen Teng, Ma Li and Ekin Cheng.

Untouchable is a $23m crime action thriller set in Macau about a boxing champion-turned-lawyer who can’t stay away from the underworld. This marks the first action film of box-office sensation Shen, known for his comic roles in films such as Goodbye Mr. Loser.

Zhang Yuqi (The Mermaid) co-stars in the film directed by Wang Daqing (One Day) and produced by Shang Ke (Let The Bullets Fly).

Previously known as Twin Blades, Brave Girls pairs leading Chinese...

Barbie‘s phenomenal box office opening in the U.S. wasn’t matched in China — not by a long shot.

The Greta Gerwig-directed Warner Bros. blockbuster opened to just $8 million in China, finishing the weekend in fifth place behind a bunch of local Chinese hits. In North America, the film debuted to a record-setting $155 million.

The soft start for Barbie continues a trend of Hollywood films earning much less in China than they once did. Tom Cruise’s Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One badly lost its opening in China the weekend prior with a third-place start behind a pair of Chinese holdovers.

Word of mouth for Barbie has been strong, despite the tepid sales. Its social scores are 9.4 on Maoyan, 9.3 on Tao Piao Piao and 8.6 on Douban. On Monday, the good buzz appeared to be giving Barbie a modest boost, with its sales ranking climbing into third place for the day.

Since the Jackie Chan/John Cena buddy film has already been released overseas, many are hoping that Hidden Strike news will surface regarding a potential US release date. Originally titled Snafu, many thought the Chan and Cena-led film would never release since production wrapped in 2018, and then news promptly went silent. However, after various setbacks due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Hidden Strike finally premiered overseas on July 6th and 7th, 2023. A 2023 release window was teased for quite a while, and audiences finally have a definitive answer for when Hidden Strike will hit the US.

Hidden Strike news reports that the movie will see special forces veterans Luo Feng (Chan) and Chris Van Horne (Cena) escort a group of civilians across Baghdad's "Highway of Death" to make it to the safety of the Green Zone. Meanwhile, the villainous Owen Paddock attempts to pull off the biggest oil heist in history. Before it was titled Snafu,...

After being stuck in post-production limbo for over five years, the action-comedy film Hidden Strike is set to premiere in 2023. The film stars Jackie Chan, an actor with over one-hundred-fifty film appearances and four decades of martial arts experience, and John Cena, a sixteen-time WWE world wrestling champion-turned-actor. The two action heroes are thrust together on a mission in Baghdad, where they must escort innocent civilians to safety.

During production, Hidden Strike had several titles--Project X-traction, Project X, Ex-Baghdad, Snafu, and The Furious Sandstorm. The start-stop timeline of production and distribution had little to do with Covid-19 and everything to do with the changing landscape surrounding Chinese cinema and its role in international box office success.

China plays a significant role in the viewership and commercial success of international films, so when Chinese cinema faces changes, Hollywood feels them. However, Hidden Strike is, as the director says, a...

Stars: Wu Jing, Wang Zhi, Andy Lau, Zina Blahusova, Clara Lee, Liya Tong, Matias Lorieri, Jeremiah Blakely, Temur Mamisashvili, Yanmanzi Zhu | Written by Gong Geer, Frant Gwo, Cixin Liu, Hongwei Wang, Ruchang Ye, Yang Zhixue | Directed by Frant Gwo

Released in 2019 The Wandering Earth became one of the largest grossing non-English language films in history, mostly on the strength of its performance in its native China. Of course, that made The Wandering Earth II inevitable. The only surprises are that rather than a sequel it’s a prequel, telling the story of the Moving Mountain Project that turned Earth into a giant spaceship and that it manages to be even longer than the original, coming in at just under three hours.

At the film’s start, The United Earth Government (Ueg) has been established and work on the first of the thousands of giant engines needed to move Earth out...

Beijing-based Tiger Pictures Entertainment has acquired worldwide distribution rights outside of mainland China for hit sci-fi comedy film “Moon Man.“

The film, which has collected some 430 million at the Chinese box office to date, tells the story of “the last human in the universe” as an astronaut finds himself stranded on the moon after an asteroid wipes out life on earth. It is directed by Zhang Chiyu, who previously directed 2017 sports comedy hit “Never Say Die.” It was produced by Mahua FunAge, a consistently successful comedy production firm.

FunAge’s “Goodbye Mr. Loser” and “Never Say Die” starred Shen Teng and Ma Li and “Moon Man” brings together the comedy duo once again.

Tiger Pictures Entertainment previously handled the worldwide release of another comedy hit film “Hi Mom” in all major markets with a prominent Chinese diaspora, including North America, Australia, Singapore, Malaysia and Cambodia as well Hong Kong and Macau Sar.

Warner Bros animation has eclipsed holdover US studio titles such as Minions: The Rise Of Gru and Thor: Love And Thunder.

World box office July 29-31

Rank

Film (distributor)

3-day (world)

Cume (world)

3-day (int’l)

Cume (int’l)

Territories

1. Moon Man (various) 129.7m 147.3m 129.7m 147.3m 1 2. DC League Of Super-Pets (Warner Bros) 41.4m 41.4m 18.4m 18.4 64 3. Minions: The Rise Of Gru (Universal) 36.2m 710.4m 25.3m 390m 80 4. Thor: Love And Thunder (Disney) 33.9m 662.4m 20.8m 360.9m 49 5. Top Gun Maverick (Paramount) 22m 1,321.1m 13.8m 671m 65 6. Nope (Universal) 18.5m 80.6m N/A N/A 1 7. Jurassic World Dominion (Universal) 15.8m 942.6m 13.7m 573.1m 87 8. Hansan: Rising Dragon...

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A heartwarming sci-fi comedy about a Chinese astronaut who believes he’s the last human alive has revived China’s box office in spectacular fashion. Moon Man, directed by Zhang Chiyu of the hit-making comedy troop Mahua FunAge, opened to 148 million over the weekend, including pre-sales, according to data from Artisan Gateway. Local ticketing app Maoyan projects the film to earn over 640 million (Rmb 4.34 billion) before it leaves Chinese screens, which would make it the country’s sixth-biggest film of all time.

Like a more whimsical version of The Martian, Moon Man stars Shen Teng (Goodbye Mr. Loser) as a Chinese astronaut on the moon who comes to believe he’s the last human in the universe after witnessing an asteroid collide with earth. In truth, earth’s many survivors, including his dream girl (Ma Li), are watching his every move via a live-stream.