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.
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.
