Over the weekend, a new Chinese comedy swept the box office, showing that Chinese films are popular. The movie “The Untold Story” stars Roy Chiu and Lang Yue-ting, made RMB80.8 million ($11.4 million) in just two days, making it the year’s most successful movie.
The movie, which Zhang Yan directed, is about an undercover police officer with a complicated life because he is also a cab driver and restores cultural artifacts. Its quick success is a sign of a bigger trend in the Chinese film market: 79.3% of all the money made at the box office this year has gone to Chinese films.
Over the weekend, international movies had a range of success. “Venom: The Last Dance” kept going strong in its third weekend, making $7.5 million, bringing its total to $83.2 million. “Cesium Fallout,” a Hong Kong movie about a nuclear disaster starring Andy Lau and Karen Mok, came in second with $7.4 million in its second weekend.
“Order of the Phoenix,” the newest “Harry Potter” movie, opened in fourth place with $2.9 million. Making $2.7 million in its first two days, the Japanese cartoon “Road to Ninja – Naruto the Movie” rounded out the top five.
One of the new movies that stood out was “Red One,” an action movie with a Christmas theme starring Dwayne Johnson. The movie had a hard time getting people to see it. It only made $2.02 million across 11,900 screens, which is not very much in a market where Christmas is not popular.
The Chinese box office keeps getting better, but it’s still behind what it was last year. Weekend sales of $42.2 million added to the $5.51 billion total for the year, which is 21% less than last year’s numbers. The monthly revenue of $510.4 million from 89.9 million entries in October was about the same as last year’s.
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Hollywood keeps having trouble in the Chinese market. Foreign imports that share revenue only make up 13.6% of the year’s gains, while other foreign imports make up another 7.1% of all box office revenue.
