(THR) The Battle of Lake Changjin rages on. The Chinese war epic earned $73 million over the weekend, taking its China box-office total to $768.8 million — a phenomenal sum unmatched by any Hollywood film released since the start of the pandemic.
The Battle of Lake Changjin is now China’s second-biggest movie of 2021, trailing only the Chinese New Year comedy hit Hi, Mom ($821 million). In the all-time China box office charts, the war film now ranks third, in U.S. dollar terms, behind Wolf Warrior 2 ($854 million) and Hi, Mom. Chinese ticket app Maoyan forecasts Battle of Lake Changjin to finish its run at second place in the record books with a total gross of $843 million.
The film is co-directed by A-list Chinese filmmakers Chen Kaige, Hark Tsui and Dante Lam, and it’s believed to be China’s most expensive film ever made, with a production budget of over $200 million. Local action hero Wu Jing (Wolf Warrior 2) and 20-year-old rising talent Jackson Yee (Better Days) co-star.
The movie glorifies Chinese sacrifices and heroism against U.S. forces during the Korean War (or “the War to Resist U.S. Aggression and Aid Korea,” as it is known in China). The film is very much in tune with the overtly nationalistic tone that has characterized much of China’s recent blockbuster output.
The holdover patriotic star vehicle My Country, My Parents came in second place for the frame, sailing past the $200 million mark. The state-backed film added $14.6 million for a cumulative total of $209.8 million, according to data from Artisan Gateway.
Arthouse director Lou Ye’s much delayed 2019 drama Saturday Fiction, starring Gong Li, Mark Chao and Japan’s Joe Odagiri, finally hit Chinese commercial screens over the weekend too. The black and white art title had trouble holding its own against the tentpoles, however, opening with just $2.3 million. Maoyan expects the title to finish with just under $4 million.
Next weekend, all attention in China will be directed towards Denis Villeneuve’s much-anticipated tentpole sci-fi adaptation of Dune. The film is produced by Legendary Entertainment, owned by Chinese real estate conglomerate Dalian Wanda Group, which also operates China’s largest cinema chain. The film will get a strong domestic marketing push courtesy of Wanda, but it also arrives at a time when interest in imported Hollywood movies is somewhat on the wane. The movie is opening simultaneously over WarnerMedia’s HBO Max streaming service in North America, which means high-quality pirate copies will instantly proliferate just as the film is hitting Chinese cinemas. Whatever the outcome, Dune‘s China release will provide box office analysts with much to parse.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter by Patrick Brzeski October 17, 2021 10:00pm
