China Box Office: ‘Guardians’ Wins Second Weekend

Disney’s return to live-action takes of their animated vault in the fullest theatrical form happens this weekend with Rob Marshall’s The Little Mermaid which is eyeing a $180M worldwide start.

Imax chief executive Rich Gelfond said he’s never seen China let as many U.S. titles into country as early as they have this year. After a slowdown in the pace that caused some angst in Hollywood, there’s been a steady stream of releases — although not necessarily a surge in ticket sales — with The Flash, The Little Mermaid and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny all cleared and upcoming and Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning likely to be, he told the J.P. Morgan media conference today.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Mainland Chinese star Wang Luodan (“The Dead End,” “Struggle,” “The Continent”) and Hong Kong-born Bosco Wong (“Lives of Omission,” “Triumph In The Skies”) head the cast of “My Dearest Stranger.” The high-end suspense drama series is a production fronted by mainland Chinese distributor-producer Hishow Entertainment, which announced the production at the Cannes Market, adjacent to the Cannes Film Festival in France. Based on the best-selling novel “Secret Love,” by Fan Shu and adapted by renowned screenwriter Cao Xueping (“Game Changer”), “My Dearest Stranger” tells a compelling story of Yu Xiao, a housewife who realizes her seemingly perfect husband may have a dark side. Yu decides to cooperate with policeman Song Cheng to find out the truth, while trying to keep her own secrets from the world.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief “Fast & Furious 10” (aka “Fast X”) dominated the mainland China box office with a strong opening weekend and a revved up opening five days. Data from consultancy firm Artisan Gateway shows Fast X scored $51.1 million between Friday and Sunday, to comfortably top the Chinese box office, with a 58% market share. Unusually, the film opened on a Wednesday. Over five days, it accumulated $77.4 million.Imax reported that the film pulled in $8.4 million from China, accounting for 11 of the China market opening, from fewer than 1% of the screens in the market. The figures reflect the five-day score, not the conventional weekend.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief “Fast & Furious 10” (aka “Fast X”) drove off with the top prize at the South Korean box office on its opening weekend. It earned $4.99 million between Friday and Saturday, according to data from Kobis, the tracking service operated by the Korean Film Council (Kofic). And over its full five-day run, from a Wednesday opening, it earned $6.76 million. Kobis showed the film claiming a 48% market share. The speedy start for “Fast X” was enough to depose “Guardians of the Galaxy 3,” which had ridden atop the Korean chart for the two previous weekends. In its third weekend on release “GOTG 3” earned $3.04 million, a 48% week-on-week decline, giving it a cumulative of $26.9 million after 19 days on release in Korea. That is the fourth highest total for any film that has played in Korean cinemas this year.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief “In Our Day,” the film by South Korean auteur Hong Sang-soo which closes the Directors’ Fortnight section of the Cannes film festival, has seen distributors in multiple territories move early to strike rights deals. French rights were picked up by Capricci), Spanish rights by L’Atalante Cinema and Greek rights by Ama Films. The film has its official premiere on May 25. Seoul-based Finecut has long been the sales agent for Hong’s plentiful output. In addition to the deals on “In Our Day,” Finecut signed agreements with L’Atalante, with France’s Ariona Films and Taiwan’s Cola Films for “In Water,” Hong’s first film of 2023 which premiered in the Encounters section in Berlin in February. The film was previously sold to Cinema Guild for North America.

The opening weekend box office results for Universal’s “Fast X” are mixed as the latest “Fast & Furious” film is performing like a franchise in decline in the U.S. but is still grossing quite well overseas.

After a $60M opening for Fast X, a $110M 4-day start for The Little Mermaid, and a $80M+ debut for Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, Paramount will keep the summer tentpole train going with Transformers: Rise of the Beasts with an estimated $68M to $70M start in U.S. and Canada.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Alibaba, China’s e-commerce and entertainment giant, announced net profits of $10.6 billion for its financial year to the end of March, a year-on-year increase of 39%. The rebound was achieved on revenues of $126 billion that were up by just 2%. Using the group’s preferred non-GAAP measure to exclude extraordinary items, net income rose by a smaller 4%, but weighed in at over $20 billion. The importance of the overall figures has been rendered moot by Alibaba’s end of March announcement that it plans to transform itself from an operating company into a holding company, by allowing each of its six divisions to go their own way.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Returning as an in-person event after cancelation last year, the Shanghai International Film Festival has set out an agenda with a clear focus on China. The festival (June 9-16) will celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Belt and Road Initiative, China’s economic outreach and development program. With a series of press conferences and film culture roundtables, the SIFF’s Belt and Road Film Week will “bring together old friends of the alliance from previous years and new friends made this year [..] and announce an action plan for the future.”

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief More than two million people turned out on Wednesday to watch “Fast X” in Chinese movie theaters, spending a combined $15.3 million on the film on its first day of release. That made the tenth film in the “Fast & Furious” franchise a clear winner at the Chinese box office in an unusual midweek release. And it put “Fast X” on course to be the biggest Hollywood film so far this year in the world’s second largest movie market. Provisional data from local data service Ent Group showed that the film also enjoyed $2.83 million from previews on Tuesday. That gives an estimated $18.2 million total at the end of its first official day of release.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief China’s entertainment, social media and technology giant Tencent, renewed its profits growth in the first quarter of 2023, after reporting its first decline in 2022. And group revenue beat financial market estimates as China’s post-COVID reopening boosted economic activity. Overall revenues in the three months from January to March 2023 reached RMB150 billion ($21.4 billion), an increase of 11% year-on-year and 3% quarter-on-quarter. Net profits in the period came in at RMB25.8 billion ($3.69 billion), a 10% year-on-year improvement.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Net profits at Tencent Music Entertainment, China’s largest digital music operation, grew by 89% in the first quarter of the new year, hitting RMB1.15 billion ($167 million), even as revenue progressed by only 5% to RMB7.0 billion ($1.02 billion). The group, which is backed by Chinese tech and entertainment giant Tencent and has stock market listings on the New York Stock Exchange and in Hong Kong, controls large equity stakes in Spotify and (in a consortium with Tencent) Universal Music Group. Its own music operations divide loosely into two clusters: mass market music streaming, with paid-for and free tiers; and “social entertainment,” including karaoke and other derivative products.

While it might seem that Fast X has run out of gas in the states, it’s totally turbo boasted overseas as the tenth installment in the Universal franchise is eyeing a an offshore start of $235M to 60M+ domestic. That will get Fast X to $295M worldwide, making it the third highest global start for a Fast & Furious movie after Fate of the Furious ($541.9M) and Furious 7 ($397.6M).

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief iQiyi, the Chinese video streamer that began a turnaround last year, reported further growth in profits in the first quarter of 2023. It said that daily subscription numbers had grown by 17 million in the past three months. Total revenues were RMB8.3 billion ($1.2 billion), increasing 15% year over year, the company said in a regulatory filing on Tuesday that covered the January to March period. Net income attributable to iQIYI was RMB618 million ($90.0 million), compared to net income attributable to iQIYI of RMB169 million in the same period in 2022. The average daily number of subscribing members, excluding trial memberships, for the quarter was 128.1 million, compared to 100.8 million for the same period in 2022 and 110.9 million for the fourth quarter in 2022. Subscription revenue per user was little changed at RMB14.35 ($2.07).

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 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.