China Box Office: ‘Born to Fly’ Leads Busy May Day Weekend

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Funding from Singaporean state sources is involved in two features that make their debut at the Cannes Film Festival this month. A third film, “The Breaking Ice,” is directed by Singapore-born filmmaker Anthony Chen. “We are absolutely thrilled that we have the most number of Made with Singapore films debuting in Cannes this year,” said Justin Ang, assistant chief executive of media, innovation, communications and marketing at Singapore’s InfoComm Media Development Authority.Malaysian-produced “Tiger Stripes,” which will play in the Critics’ Week section, and Vietnamese-made “Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell,” which will play in the Directors’ Fortnight section, both received cash injections from the Southeast Asia Co-Production Grant under the ‘Media Talent Progression Programme,’ which is backed by the Singapore Film Commission and the IMDA.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Distribution Workshop has picked up international sales duties on “A Legend,” the Jackie Chan -starring film.As previously reported, the film is now in production. “A Legend” is now pitched as a $50 million sequel to the 2005 action romance “The Myth” that involved both Chan and director Stanley Tong. In previous communication, producer Bona Film Group said that the film was inspired by the earlier film. The new picture will be the tenth time that Chan and Tong have worked together, following other titles that include “Police Story 3,” “Supercop” and “Vanguard.”

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief The Hong Kong Disneyland theme park managed a 22% increase in visitor numbers in its most recent financial year allowing it to modestly reduce its annual losses. The park, which is jointly owned by the Hong Kong government and Walt Disney, with the government holding a narrow majority, reports a financial year to the end of September – and does so more than seven months in arrears. It has been loss-making for the past eight financial years and has made profits in only three years since its opening in 2005. The 2021-2022 financial year was again complicated by the city’s strict anti-COVID restrictions. It was fully closed for three and a half months (longer than the previous financial year) and operated under other social distancing and pandemic measures. Additionally, inbound tourism was heavily curtailed, especially from mainland China. That meant that during the reporting period, the park and hotels were largely visited by locals only.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3” enjoyed a second weekend on top of the mainland China box office, as all top five placed films remained unchanged and audiences await “Fast & Furious 10.” “Guardians Vol 3” earned $19.0 million between Friday and Sunday, according to data from consultancy Artisan Gateway. That was a decent week-on-week hold, representing a drop of only 32% from its debut weekend, following a solid but unspectacular start. And it gives the film a total of $58.7 million after ten days in mainland Chinese theaters. Imax screens accounted for $3 million of the film’s weekend score in China and lifted the film’s Imax total in China to $10.4 million, which Imax calculates as 18% of its China total.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Box office headlines have lately been dominated by Hollywood movies like Universal’s “The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” which has become the first movie of the year to hit $1 billion, and Disney’s “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3.” But a closer look at the global box office recovery indicates that Tinseltown does not have the field to itself. In fact, international films and markets — not the United States — are driving the current global box office recovery. In some territories, local-language titles are even dominant over Hollywood releases. And the overall scale of overseas ticket sales now dwarfs that of North America by more than two to one.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Alexi Tan, a screenwriter and director who was a protégé of John Woo, has teamed with artist Charles Simpson to launch comic book “Monk Wars.” The “Monk Wars” universe is a dystopian gritty world filled with martial arts action and a broad array of diverse characters. The first book will follow Monk Ma, who has ancient animal powers, as he assembles his followers to take on the Rat-Men soldiers.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Pema Tseden, the Tibetan art house film director known for “Jinpa” and “Balloon,” has died. He was 53. It is understood that he was in Tibet when he died suddenly of an unspecified illness. Some unconfirmed Chinese-language media said that he had a heart attack. The news was reported by the China Academy of Art, where he taught as a professor. “Pema Tseden, a famous Tibetan director, screenwriter and professor at the Film School of the China Academy of Art, died in Tibet in the early hours of May 8 due to an acute illness. Due to the sudden incident, the school will work with Mr Tseden’s family to deal with the follow up matters. The relevant information will be announced in due course,” the Academy said in a statement.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” made $28 million of gross box office on its opening weekend in mainland China. That was a solid result in present circumstances, rather than an overwhelming one. The film easily displaced two of the weaker Chinese titles that had been released a week earlier to take advantage of the five-day May Day holiday season. “Born to Fly,” a patriotic action adventure about Chinese test pilots, nose-dived by 75% as it fell from a $40 million first place debut to a $11.2 million third-placed second flap. Its cumulative after two weekends is $77.3 million, according to weekend data from consultancy Artisan Gateway.

last month’s momentum going with strong audience reception that should allow James Gunn’s final MCU film to leg out in theaters. With $38.9 million grossed from 4,405 locations on Saturday, “Guardians Vol. 3” beat industry projections and may do so again on Sunday, possibly allowing it to get to a final weekend total closer to $120 million when actual totals are reported on Monday.

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media Reporter “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3,” the conclusion to Marvel’s trilogy about an intergalactic crew of misfits, kicked off with $114 million in its domestic box office debut. Those ticket sales rank as the second-biggest opening weekend of the year, behind “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” with $146 million. Despite the towering figure, the film ever-so-slightly missed expectations of $120 million and arrived considerably behind its predecessor, 2017’s “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2” with $146 million. It’s a jump on the first “Guardians of the Galaxy,” which introduced the world to Chris Pratt’s Star Lord and his friends and opened to $94 million in 2014.

Naman Ramachandran Universal’s “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” ruled the U.K. and Ireland box office collecting £3.06 million ($3.8 million) in its fourth weekend for a total of £45.7 million, per numbers from Comscore. In its second weekend, Studiocanal’s “Evil Dead Rise” earned £1.05 million in second place for a total of £3.3 million. There were a couple of strong debuts in the top five. eOne’s “The Unlikely Pilgrimage Of Harold Fry” bowed in third place with £784,698, while DG Tech’s Tamil-language magnum opus “Ponniyin Selvan: 2,” also released in the Telugu and Hindi languages, debuted in fourth position with £618,244. Rounding off the top five, in its fifth weekend, was eOne’s “Dungeons And Dragons: Honor Among Thieves” with £575,796.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief The Argentina-Chile coproduction “The Punishment,” directed by Matias Bize, was named best feature over the weekend at the close of the Beijing International Film Festival. Mexico’s Lila Avilés won the Tiantan Award for best director for her film “Totem.” Antonia Zegers and Line Renaud shared the best actress award for “The Punishment” and “Driving Madeleine,” respectively. The best actor award went to Xin Baiqing for Chinese movie “The Shadowless Tower.” The film, which premiered in February in Berlin, was the numerical winner. With the best screenplay, music, cinematography and artistic contribution awards, it won a total of five prizes.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief “The Super Mario Bros Movie” and a local sports movie “Dream” gave the South Korean box office some bounce on their first weekend on release. Opening in Korea on Wednesday, some three weeks after the beginning of its international and North American campaigns, “Super Mario” earned $4.67 million between Friday and Sunday, according to data from Kobis, the tracking service operated by the Korean Film Council (Kofic). The film has a cumulative of $5.76 million over its opening five days, plus previews. The film’s weekend numbers are the second highest opening tally recorded by any film this year in Korea. And its weekend score represented a comfortable 40% market share.

quarterly earnings report.Imax reported quarterly revenue of $86.9 million and earnings of $5.1 million or 4 cents per share on a diluted basis and 16 cents per share on an adjusted basis. That beat Wall Street projections of $77.5 million in revenue and adjusted EPS of 15 cents per share, according to analysts surveyed by Zacks Investment Research.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Director Stanley Tong (“Rumble in the Bronx”) is to team up with Jackie Chan for the tenth time on “The Legend.” State media in China report that Chan, who recently reached the top spot in the mainland Chinese box office with aged stuntman comedy “Ride On,” will play an archaeologist on a quest through time and space. With production by Bona Film Group, “The Legend” is pitched as being in the same vein as Tong and Chan’s 2005 effort “The Myth,” which was a fantasy love story. Tong and Chan have worked together on other titles including “Police Story 3,” “Supercop” and “Vanguard.” India’s Jio Studios is backing “Khashaba,” a Marathi-language film on the life of India’s first Olympic medalist Khasaba Dadasaheb. After delivering the sleeper hit Sairat and Fandry, the new film will be directed by Nagraj Manjule. The title is considered as part of Jio Studio’s ambition to deliver more than 100 stories this year. With production to begin shortly, the film will be mounted on a large scale. “Along with entertaining the audience, this film will also introduce the audience to a brave and exceptional athlete who made India proud all over the world,” said Manjule. “Khashaba” will be presented by JioStudios and produced by Aatpat Production, Jyoti Deshpande and Manjule.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief The highly-anticipated Japanese animated feature film “The First Slam Dunk” dominated the mainland China cinema box office in its opening weekend. It broke multiple records as it did so. The film scored $38.5 million (RMB266 million) over the Friday to Sunday weekend, according to data from consultancy Artisan Gateway. However, it opened on Thursday, a day earlier than is the norm in China, and has accumulated $55.2 million over the opening four-day frame. The film is based on IP that is well-known to a generation of comic book fans and TV audiences in China (early middle-aged men were reported to have been particularly interested) and has already proved a hit in other parts of Asia. (Comscore estimates that the film has grossed $211 million worldwide.)

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief The South Korean cinema box office fell to its lowest level of the year over the latest weekend. Nationwide theatrical earnings in a territory which before COVID was the world’s fourth largest were barely over $6 million. “John Wick: Chapter 4” lead the weekend chart from Japanese anime “Suzume” and Korean sports drama “Rebound” in a top three repeat from a week earlier. “John Wick 4” earned $2.51 million in its second weekend of release, according to data from Kobis, the tracking service operated by the Korean Film Council (Kofic). That was a 38% week-on-week decline and represented a 41% share of the total Korean box office market. It also gave the film a cumulative total of $9.73 million since release on April 12.

Revising its projection from December last year, Gower Street Analytics has increased its estimate for global box office across 2023. The London-based firm now expects worldwide receipts to hit $32B for the year. The updated projection comes as the industry gathers in Las Vegas on the eve of CinemaCon and as The Super Mario Bros Movie is poised to be the first $1B global grosser of 2023.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Global cinema box office recovered strongly in the first three months of the year, driven by the performance of “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” in many territories and a bumper Chinese New Year season in mainland China. The upbeat news was delivered on the eve of CinemaCon Las Vegas by specialist research firm Gower Street Analytics, which has now increased its forecast of the cinema industry’s full year. The firm now projects that 2023 gross revenues will reach $32 billion, a 10% increase on its earlier estimate of $29 billion. “A $32 billion global box office in 2023 would represent an approximate +23% improvement on 2022. It remains 20% behind an average of the last three pre-pandemic years (2017-2019), but it shows how post-pandemic recovery of our business continues to improve,” said Gower Street.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Rights to ‘Man in Black,” one of two documentary films by China’s Wang Bing to appear in Official Selection at Cannes this year, have been picked up by specialty sales agency Asian Shadows. The 60-minute film, which will debut as a special screening, is a portrait of 86-year-old Wang Xilin, one of China’s most important modern classical composers and is now lives in exile in Germany. It was made in close collaboration with French cinematographer Caroline Champetier, whose credits include Leos Carax’s “Holy Motors,” Amos Gitai’s “Promised Land” and Andre Techine’s “Alice and Martin.” During the 1960s, when China’s Cultural Revolution forced intellectuals into the fields and stripped the middle classes of their wealth, Wang Xilin was the was the target of severe persecution, including beatings, imprisonment and torture. The film examines the body and soul of a man scarred by a life of suffering, who is yet still capable of deep and sincere compassion.