A shoestring Chinese drama about old letters and family secrets has bulldozed one of Hollywood’s biggest franchises at China’s box office, with “Dear You” pulling in $45.5 million over the May 22–24 weekend and pushing its cumulative total to $158.1 million — while “The Mandalorian and Grogu” debuted a distant second with just $5.3 million.
Directed by Lan Hongchun and starring Li Sitong and Wang Yantong, the low-budget breakout earned RMB 309.4 million in its fourth weekend of release. The film opened April 30 with a mere 3.6 percent share of nationwide cinema screenings and a first-day gross of 3.77 million yuan, then climbed steadily as audience recommendations swept across Chinese social media. By Sunday, it had spent 15 consecutive days at the top of China’s daily box office charts, with its screening share surging to 48 percent.
Reportedly produced on a budget of just over 10 million yuan, the film draws on the history of “qiaopi” — the letters and remittances sent home by generations of overseas Chinese. It holds a remarkable 9.1 rating out of 10 on Douban, China’s leading film review platform, among the highest scores for any domestic release in the past decade. Forecasting platforms Maoyan and Beacon have revised their projections upward several times, now placing the film’s final theatrical tally at nearly 1.8 billion yuan.
The film also screened at Cannes in May, signaling ambitions beyond the Chinese market. It has sparked extensive public debate about what the film’s success may signal for China’s cultural and creative industries.
Star Wars, by contrast, arrived in China with far less fanfare than its domestic performance suggested it deserved. “The Mandalorian and Grogu” earned $82 million in the U.S. and Canada over the opening weekend, with an estimated $102 million through Monday’s Memorial Day holiday and $165 million globally. Analysts called the result the weakest opening for a Star Wars film since Disney acquired the franchise in 2012. Star Wars has long lacked a nostalgia factor in China; Disney pushed hard for “The Force Awakens” in 2015, which grossed $124 million there, but subsequent entries fell sharply.
Since 2020, domestically produced films have accounted for roughly 80 percent of China’s annual box office revenue, up from around 50 to 60 percent before 2019, according to Beacon data. China’s overall weekend grosses reached $59.2 million, with year-to-date revenue standing at $2.24 billion — down 43.5 percent from the same period in 2025. That decline reflects a market still searching for a hit capable of reversing months of softness, and “Dear You,” made for the cost of a modest TV production, may be the one to do it.
