Robert Downey Jr.’s family film “Dolittle” and Sony’s thriller “Bloodshot” led China’s first opening weekend at the box office since the coronavirus outbreak, a sign that new titles sell better than re-runs of beloved classics. Five out of the top 10 films this weekend were Hollywood titles.
China began reopening theaters in regions deemed at low risk for Covid-19 on Monday. As of noon on Sunday, local time, it had opened around 4,900 cinemas, accounting for approximately 44% of the country’s total. They are currently only allowed to operate at 30% capacity to provide sufficient social distancing between customers.
“Dolittle,” from Universal, was the top title this weekend with a $4.71 million three-day debut, according to Chinese data provider Ent Group. Vin Diesel-starring “Bloodshot,” backed by China’s Bona Film Group, trailed in second place, bowing to the tune of $2.61 million.
Local crime thriller “Sheep Without a Shepherd” came in third with $2 million.
China began reopening theaters in regions deemed at low risk for Covid-19 on Monday. As of noon on Sunday, local time, it had opened around 4,900 cinemas, accounting for approximately 44% of the country’s total. They are currently only allowed to operate at 30% capacity to provide sufficient social distancing between customers.
“Dolittle,” from Universal, was the top title this weekend with a $4.71 million three-day debut, according to Chinese data provider Ent Group. Vin Diesel-starring “Bloodshot,” backed by China’s Bona Film Group, trailed in second place, bowing to the tune of $2.61 million.
Local crime thriller “Sheep Without a Shepherd” came in third with $2 million.
- 7/26/2020
- by Rebecca Davis
- Variety Film + TV
A trio of Hollywood titles previously approved for China announced Thursday that they are set to hit the big screen now that cinemas are kicking back into gear.
“Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” in 3D and 4K restorations, will screen in China starting Aug. 14 to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the franchise. “We invite you to re-experience the infinite magic of Hogwarts and bizarre and motley Wizarding World,” Warner Brothers said in a Chinese statement.
That film, and the seven others in the series, anchor an eclectic line-up at the Shanghai Int. Film Festival, where they are set to screen over the course of the event’s July 25 to Aug. 2 run, giving audiences an early taste of the magic.
“Harry Potter” will go up against the Will Smith-starring “Bad Boys For Life,” which will also premiere Aug. 14. The film announced it would release in China back in January, but...
“Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” in 3D and 4K restorations, will screen in China starting Aug. 14 to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the franchise. “We invite you to re-experience the infinite magic of Hogwarts and bizarre and motley Wizarding World,” Warner Brothers said in a Chinese statement.
That film, and the seven others in the series, anchor an eclectic line-up at the Shanghai Int. Film Festival, where they are set to screen over the course of the event’s July 25 to Aug. 2 run, giving audiences an early taste of the magic.
“Harry Potter” will go up against the Will Smith-starring “Bad Boys For Life,” which will also premiere Aug. 14. The film announced it would release in China back in January, but...
- 7/23/2020
- by Rebecca Davis
- Variety Film + TV
Paramount Pictures’ “Sonic the Hedgehog” will finally debut on the big screen in China on July 31, becoming the headliner for the second weekend of business for newly reopened cinemas.
The film will compete for audience attention with two other animated titles now set to hit screens July 31: a re-release of the 2014 Disney animated film “Big Hero 6,” which grossed $83.8 million in Chinese cinemas in 2015, and new local animation “Mr. Miao.”
“Sonic the Hedgehog” was initially scheduled to premiere in China on Feb. 28, two weeks after its Feb. 14 U.S. debut. The film grossed $146 million Stateside. Its most successful overseas territory to date has been the U.K., where it grossed $24 million, followed by France, where it grossed $17 million.
The film will number among the half dozen or so other American titles that are being deployed to help catalyze audience interest in returning to cinemas, most of which are family-friendly,...
The film will compete for audience attention with two other animated titles now set to hit screens July 31: a re-release of the 2014 Disney animated film “Big Hero 6,” which grossed $83.8 million in Chinese cinemas in 2015, and new local animation “Mr. Miao.”
“Sonic the Hedgehog” was initially scheduled to premiere in China on Feb. 28, two weeks after its Feb. 14 U.S. debut. The film grossed $146 million Stateside. Its most successful overseas territory to date has been the U.K., where it grossed $24 million, followed by France, where it grossed $17 million.
The film will number among the half dozen or so other American titles that are being deployed to help catalyze audience interest in returning to cinemas, most of which are family-friendly,...
- 7/20/2020
- by Rebecca Davis
- Variety Film + TV
Takings remain small as cinemas steadily reopen following Covid-19 closures.
RankFilm (Distributor)Three-day gross (Jul 10-12)Total gross to date Week 1 Onward (Disney) £48,142 £5.43m 6 2 Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (Disney) £32,556 £83,067 2 3 Trolls World Tour (Universal) £23,586 £115,437 2 4 Black Water: Abyss (Altitude) £16,093 £60,000 2 5 Dirty Dancing (30th anniversary) £14,498 £293,319 166
Gbp to Usd conversion rate: 1.26.
Disney has continued to lead the post-lockdown box office in the UK and Ireland with Pixar animation Onward and a re-release of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back taking the top two slots.
In the absence of any new major releases, Onward returned to the top of the box office with £48,142 across...
RankFilm (Distributor)Three-day gross (Jul 10-12)Total gross to date Week 1 Onward (Disney) £48,142 £5.43m 6 2 Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (Disney) £32,556 £83,067 2 3 Trolls World Tour (Universal) £23,586 £115,437 2 4 Black Water: Abyss (Altitude) £16,093 £60,000 2 5 Dirty Dancing (30th anniversary) £14,498 £293,319 166
Gbp to Usd conversion rate: 1.26.
Disney has continued to lead the post-lockdown box office in the UK and Ireland with Pixar animation Onward and a re-release of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back taking the top two slots.
In the absence of any new major releases, Onward returned to the top of the box office with £48,142 across...
- 7/20/2020
- by 1100453¦Michael Rosser¦9¦
- ScreenDaily
China reopened its cinemas on Monday after nearly five months of closure, but audiences are only trickling in.
The re-opening was restricted to theaters in cities and regions where the coronavirus is deemed to have been vanquished. That excluded Beijing, where recent weeks have seen a resurgence of Covid-19 cases.
By 6 p.m. local time, cumulative nationwide gross takings totalled $470,000 (RMB3.35 million), according to figures from measurement agency and consultancy Entdata. Earlier in the day, state media had reported that the total included more than $150,000 of prior bookings, which indicates that only modest numbers of cinema-goers made decisions on the day.
The slow pace of ticket sales in commercial theaters contrasted with buoyant first day sales for the Shanghai International Film Festival. Unconfirmed local sources report that the festival achieved over 100,000 ticket sales in the first 10 minutes of online ticketing. The festival will run July 25-Aug. 2.
Rewarding a degree of bold programming,...
The re-opening was restricted to theaters in cities and regions where the coronavirus is deemed to have been vanquished. That excluded Beijing, where recent weeks have seen a resurgence of Covid-19 cases.
By 6 p.m. local time, cumulative nationwide gross takings totalled $470,000 (RMB3.35 million), according to figures from measurement agency and consultancy Entdata. Earlier in the day, state media had reported that the total included more than $150,000 of prior bookings, which indicates that only modest numbers of cinema-goers made decisions on the day.
The slow pace of ticket sales in commercial theaters contrasted with buoyant first day sales for the Shanghai International Film Festival. Unconfirmed local sources report that the festival achieved over 100,000 ticket sales in the first 10 minutes of online ticketing. The festival will run July 25-Aug. 2.
Rewarding a degree of bold programming,...
- 7/20/2020
- by Patrick Frater
- Variety Film + TV
Universal’s Dolittle and Sony’s Bloodshot are both scheduled to open this weekend.
China’s theatrical market showed its first signs of life in nearly six months on Monday (July 20), the day on which authorities finally allowed cinemas to reopen in “low-risk areas” across the country.
Total box office had surpassed $460,000 (RMB3.22m) as of 17:00 local time, with Lina Wang’s award-winning A First Farewell, a coming-of-age story set among the Uyghur community, topping the chart with $160,000 (RMB1.1m).
Most of the other films opening today are rereleases, including US titles Coco, The Pursuit Of Happyness and A Dog’s Purpose,...
China’s theatrical market showed its first signs of life in nearly six months on Monday (July 20), the day on which authorities finally allowed cinemas to reopen in “low-risk areas” across the country.
Total box office had surpassed $460,000 (RMB3.22m) as of 17:00 local time, with Lina Wang’s award-winning A First Farewell, a coming-of-age story set among the Uyghur community, topping the chart with $160,000 (RMB1.1m).
Most of the other films opening today are rereleases, including US titles Coco, The Pursuit Of Happyness and A Dog’s Purpose,...
- 7/20/2020
- by 89¦Liz Shackleton¦0¦
- ScreenDaily
With her debut feature film “A First Farewell”, Lina Wang won the Best Asian Future Film Award at the Tokyo international film festival and the Crystal Bear of the Generation Kplus section at Berlin this year. Born (1987) and raised in Shaya, Xinjiang, Wang studied at the Communication University of China in Beijing, before dedicating herself to the filmmaking.
The film centers on three Uighur primary-school children who live in a small village that borders with a vast desert. It’s an intimate and warm story about the small community, that is indirectly addressing some of the Uighur pressing issues.
We interviewed Lina Wang via mail, after the screening of her film at the Cinemajove festival in Valencia.
What makes the Uighur region so attractive?
More than one hundred years ago, the anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan wrote in his book “Ancient Society”, that the Tarim river is the cradle of the civilization.
The film centers on three Uighur primary-school children who live in a small village that borders with a vast desert. It’s an intimate and warm story about the small community, that is indirectly addressing some of the Uighur pressing issues.
We interviewed Lina Wang via mail, after the screening of her film at the Cinemajove festival in Valencia.
What makes the Uighur region so attractive?
More than one hundred years ago, the anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan wrote in his book “Ancient Society”, that the Tarim river is the cradle of the civilization.
- 7/19/2019
- by Marina D. Richter
- AsianMoviePulse
Friend, I have watched you down the mountain/ Till now in the dark I close my thatch-door…/ Grasses return again green in the spring,/ But, O Wang Sun, will you return? The seasonality of a life far removed from the mechanization of “elevated highways and buildings even made from glass” adheres to a sense of cyclical permanence governed by a higher, earthly power. Though written over a millennium ago, Wang Wei’s poignant question finds a home even today: a contemplation of human impermanence to which there is no immediate answer – a parting, a farewell. It is an unwelcome contemplation with life-changing implications in Lina Wang’s debut feature ‘A First Farewell’ and though the poet himself plays a less wholesome role his likening as a painter-poet manifests superbly in this visual love-letter to Xinjiang.
A First Farewell is screening at Berlin Film Festival
A lifetime away from the frantic buzz of the Han-centric East,...
A First Farewell is screening at Berlin Film Festival
A lifetime away from the frantic buzz of the Han-centric East,...
- 2/14/2019
- by Jamie Cansdale
- AsianMoviePulse
“A First Farewell,” which debuted this week at the Berlin Film Festival, has secured its first sale and looks set to have a promising festival career. The movie is the first in nearly 30 years at the Berlinale to have been shot in Uighur, the language spoken in the vast western Chinese province of Xinjiang.
Following its premiere in Berlin’s Generation Kplus youth section, the Chinese-made film has received 10 additional festival invitations and been sold to Italy’s Mariposa Cinematografica. Sales agent Flash Forward Entertainment says it is also in advanced negotiations to license the film to major territories including the U.S., U.K., Germany, Spain, India, and South Korea.
At home in China, the completed film, by first-time director Lina Wang, secured investment from Tencent Pictures, the filmmaking arm of China’s social media, games and video giant Tencent. A domestic release strategy has not yet been elaborated.
Following its premiere in Berlin’s Generation Kplus youth section, the Chinese-made film has received 10 additional festival invitations and been sold to Italy’s Mariposa Cinematografica. Sales agent Flash Forward Entertainment says it is also in advanced negotiations to license the film to major territories including the U.S., U.K., Germany, Spain, India, and South Korea.
At home in China, the completed film, by first-time director Lina Wang, secured investment from Tencent Pictures, the filmmaking arm of China’s social media, games and video giant Tencent. A domestic release strategy has not yet been elaborated.
- 2/14/2019
- by Patrick Frater
- Variety Film + TV
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