China Box Office: Taiwanese Crime Film ‘The Pig, the Snake and the Pigeon’ Opens on Top, Ahead of ‘Madame Web’

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief ‘Kung Fu Panda 4’ opened on top of the mainland China box office in its first official week of release. But its debut was soft and led the market to one of its quietest weekends of the year. The Universal-DreamWorks Animation picture earned $14.7 million (RMB105 million) between Friday and Sunday, according to data provided by consultancy firm Artisan Gateway.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Miyazaki Hayao’s “The Boy and the Heron,” which recently won the Oscar for best animated feature film, will head to global streaming giant Netflix later this year, excluding the U.S. and Japan. The hand-drawn, critically acclaimed fantasy adventure film is part of a renewed worldwide catalog deal between Netflix and the Japanese producer Studio Ghibli, sales agent Goodfellas and independent distributor GKids.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief China’s social media, games and video giant Tencent saw 2023 revenues advance by 10% to $84.6 billion (RMB609 billion). But its net profits slid to $16.3 billion (RMB118 billion), down from $26.3 billion a year earlier. The group is directly affected by weakness in the mainland Chinese economy, which has recovered only slowly since the end of the COVID pandemic, and by ongoing regulatory concerns.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Fashion, East-West Asian identities, corporate espionage and romance are on the agenda in “Morning, Paris!,” a new mini-series project being pitched at Series Mania by veteran filmmaker Quentin Lee (“The People I’ve Slept With,” “White Frog”). “’Morning, Paris!’ is a heartfelt comedy about a young modern BIPOC Canadian woman discovering herself in the most romantic city in the world,” says Lee. “Or put another way, it is a limited television series about an aspiring female fashion designer from Vancouver who ends up in Paris Fashion week with a very unlikely companion because she wants to spy on her boss on whom she has a crush.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief “The Boy and the Heron,” the Oscar-winning animated feature film by iconic Japanese director Miyazaki Hayao, is finally to be given a release in cinemas in mainland China. The picture is scheduled to release in China on April 3, 2024, according to Alibaba Pictures. Tickets are already available on booking sites such as Maoyan and Alibaba’s Taopiaopiao.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Previews for Universal Pictures and Dreamworks Animation’s “Kung Fu Panda 4” put the Chinese-themed film in fourth place at the mainland China box office, a week ahead of its official theatrical debut. Over the March 15-17 weekend, however, first and second places remained with holdover titles “The Pig, The Snake and the Pigeon” and “Dune: Part Two.” Taiwanese crime film “The Pig, The Snake and the Pigeon,” already playing on Netflix in territories outside China, topped the mainland China chart for the third successive weekend. According to data from consultancy Artisan Gateway, it earned $11.1 million (RMB79.1 million), for a cumulative of $73.2 million (RMB520 million).

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Linmon Pictures, one of the most outward-looking mainland Chinese entertainment firms, is preparing premium series “Hate Coin.” The show is being produced in association with Jonathan Wong and Justina Shih’s production company Octagon Metatainment, a Hong Kong-based multimedia studio. “Hate Coin” is based on international best-selling novel “Second Sister,” by successful Hong Kong novelist Chan Ho Kei, whose previous book “The Borrowed” was a crime story that panned five-decades. The story follows the activities of a young woman whose school-age sister appeared to have committed suicide. Suspecting foul play, the woman trams up with a manipulative hacker and cybersecurity expert to try to dig deeper. “What follows is a cat and mouse game through the city of Hong Kong and its digital underground, especially an online gossip platform, where someone has been slandering Siu-Man.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief “Escaping Man,” a Chinese drama feature about a man dragged into a kidnap plot, heads the FilMart slate of Hong Kong-based sales agency Autumn Sun Company. The protagonist is a man who spent 20 years in jail after being falsely accused of rape. After his release, he intends to confront the woman, but instead falls for her again — to the point that she is able to manipulate him into kidnapping the child for which she is the nanny.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Peter Chan Ho-sun has assembled a starry cast headed by Zhang Ziyi and box office sensation Lei Jiayin for his new feature film “She Has No Name.” The film, which recently completed principal photography, probes the progress of women’s rights in China. “One woman’s suffering gives rise to the revolution of women’s social rights in China,” reads a tagline.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Thailand is poised to get serious about its commitment to the film industry, and plans to launch a major new body, the Thailand Creative Culture Agency, with a budget of THB7 billion ($200 million). Long a destination for Hollywood, China and India productions, and currently playing host to the lensing of Season 3 of “The White Lotus,” Thailand has many of the elements that could contribute to building a major film industry. These include diverse locations, skilled crews, studio facilities and a location production, or incentive, scheme.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief China’s unprecedented economic and social transformation in the latter part of the 20th century has been picked over in dozens of movies by filmmakers ranging from Jia Zhangke to Wang Xiaoshuai. But with more than one billion people affected by China’s transformation, there is no shortage of personal stories and no end of ways to tell the tale. Sophomore filmmaker Huo Meng trains his eye on one of those stories in his second film, “The Wind Is Unstoppable,” which he is just finishing off.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief “Dune 2” launched in mainland China cinemas this weekend with a solid $19.9 million three-day haul. That put it in second place, narrowly behind holdover crime-drama “The Pig, the Snake and the Pigeon.” Data from consultancy firm Artisan Gateway, showed that “The Pig, the Snake and the Pigeon” earned $21.3 million (RMB151 million) between Friday and Sunday, for a 10-day cumulative of $54.1 million (RMB384 million).

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Lily Franky, the Japanese acting sensation who starred in “Shoplifters” and “Like Father Like Son,” heads the cast of “Diamonds in the Sand,” a multinational co-production that appears at the Hong Kong — Asia Film Financing Forum (HAF) as a work in progress. Developed and directed by Janus Victoria, the film started as an exploration of the Japanese phenomenon of kodokushi, or lonely death, where elderly people who live alone are discovered dead only months after their passing due to the isolated lives that they lead.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief COVID, changing money flows and a new superpower Cold War of sorts may have, over the past few years, helped to reduce the connections between the film and TV industries of China and the rest of the world — so, will the 2024 edition of FilMart, whose organizers continue to claim bridgehead status, be the market to increase those connections? Candas Yeung, the Trade Development Council associate director who takes over as head of FilMart this year, says that visitor and exhibitor numbers have crept up again this year — to an anticipated 7,500 and 715, respectively — and that fully 40% of market participants hail from mainland China. “That’s a pretty significant proportion and they are very active in the market, both buying and selling, and making some announcements,” Yeung says.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Film projects to be produced by Andrew Lau (“Infernal Affairs,” “Initial D”) and Han Sanping, the former head of China Film Corp., are among the new in-development titles that grace the FilMart slate of Hong Kong studio Media Asia. The Peter Lam-controlled studio is also poised, at an event within FilMart on Monday, to detail its new alliance with China’s Alibaba Pictures Group. Lau is producing “Behind the Scene,” a book-to-film adaptation to be directed by Lee Kwong-yiu (“Insanity”) in which four friends uncover a meticulously planned murder that is carefully disguised as a kidnapping. Suspicions fall on a bank president who is involved in counterfeiting. Han is aiming to produce “Fading Tracks,” another crime title that is also adapted from a novel.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Oscar contenders and Berlin prize-winners will be among the European films being represented by visiting companies to FilMart that are making use of the European Film Promotion umbrella stand within the annual Hong Kong market. In total 29 European film sales companies are making the trip, including more than a dozen from France under the Unifrance banner. Prominent rights brokers include Charades, Goodfellas, Fandango and Filmax.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief This month’s Hong Kong International Film Festival will showcase over 190 films from 62 countries and regions, including five world premieres, and 64 Asian premieres. Running 12 days (March 28 – April 8), the festival will open with the Asian premiere of local director Ray Yeung’s “All Shall Be Well,” which won the Teddy Award at the recent Berlin festival.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief A year after announcing the ambitious project, The Philippines ABS-CBN is now in production on new series “The Bagman.” Filming began in Manila on Feb. 25. “The Bagman” is a spin-off from the original, locally-produced digital series “Bagman” that was aimed at the Filipino audience.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Warner Bros. is to handle the Southeast Asia theatrical release of Philippines-produced drama film “Under Parallel Skies.” The picture will have its world premiere this weekend as part of the Asian Film Awards in Hong Kong. Directed by Sigrid Bernardo, “Under Parallel Skies” follows the story of a Thai bachelor, portrayed by major local star Win Metawin, who travels to Hong Kong in search of his missing mother.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Veteran mainland Chinese director Zhang Yimou is to be honored twice over at the Asian Film Awards ceremony on Sunday. He will be presented with a lifetime achievement award and a separate prize for directing the highest-grossing Asian film of 2023.