China Box Office: ‘New Gods: Yang Jian’ Repeats Weekend Win

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Veteran film, theater and opera director Julie Taymor has been set as the president of the competition jury at next month’s Tokyo International Film Festival. Taymor (“The Lion King”) will head a small group that selects the winners from the 15 competition titles that unspool in Tokyo between Oct. 24 and Nov. 2, 2022. The other four members of the jury will be announced later. Taymor is the second woman to head the jury in as many years and follows Isabelle Huppert in 2021. There was no competition in 2020 due to COVID. And in 2019, the jury was headed by China’s Zhang Ziyi.

The Viola Davis femme African warrior epic The Woman King —a flashback to the types of historical epics Columbia Pictures has had a long history of notching Oscars with– is looking at a $12M opening per Sony this weekend, while rivals have it in the $13M-$16M range.

Refresh for latest…: There was a little more excitement at the international box office this weekend, with two local movies leading the charge and a handful of new milestones for Hollywood pics.

SATURDAY AM UPDATE: With the exit of New Line’s adaptation of Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot in what has been a lucrative post Labor Day weekend pre-pandemic, Disney swooped in and booked its 20th Century Studios horror title Barbarian. That pic, directed and written by Zach Cregger, follows a woman staying at an Airbnb, who discovers that the house she has rented is not what it seems. The movie grossed $3.8M on Friday (including $850K Thursday night previews) and is poised to make around $9M, possibly double digits.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Wang Xiaoshuai, director of “So Long, My Son” and “Red Amnesia,” will be the most senior mainland Chinese director to present a new film at a major Western festival this year. That may be a reflection of the growing political and economic separation between China and the West over the past couple of years — with COVID an additional irritant. But tough times can also breed innovation. Wang’s latest, “The Hotel,” a chamber piece about a small group of Chinese tourists trapped in a hotel in Thailand during the early days of the pandemic, was inspired by events that Wang personally endured in 2020. It was made in almost improvised fashion, with a hastily written screenplay and shot with available crew.

Widespread optimism months ago that domestic box office might readily return to pre-Covid levels has given way to a new sense of pragmatism about the movie business.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Jack Neo, who is by far Singapore’s most commercially successful filmmaker, has begun production on “King of Musang King,” a comedy that he envisages being ready for release at Chinese New Year in January. The narrative gives prominent position to durians, the smelly Southeast Asian fruit that most people either love or hate. Neo (“Money No Enough,” the “Ah Boys to Men” franchise) will co-star, direct and produce through his J Team Productions. The film will be presented by J Team, mm2 Entertainment and Cathay Cineplexes. The story revolves around a man (played by Mark Lee), his abandoned Malaysian wife (played by Yeo Yann Yann), and childhood friend Mao Shan (played by Jack Neo).

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief For Asian media operators, the death of Queen Elizabeth II occurred in the middle of the night — Buckingham Palace made its announcement at 6.30 p.m. BST on Thursday — which meant some needed to play catch-up. That was achieved quicker by online and TV outlets than print media. In Australia, a Commonwealth country which has also lost its monarch, public radio and TV broadcaster Australian Broadcasting Corporation newsreaders dressed in black. Programming has switched to reflect the Queen’s life and seven decades of reign. News Corp., which operates major print news brands in Australia, said it will publish souvenir issues on Saturday. These will include the Herald Sun, Daily Telegraph, The Courier-Mail and The Advertiser.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Family comedy “Table For Six” has set an opening day local record for a comedy film in Hong Kong, to the relief of producers who were forced to digest a releasing delay of six months. The Sunny Chan-directed film opened Wednesday in Hong Kong and Macau at 61 theatres, playing a total of 608 sessions. That gave it an accumulated box office of HK$1,986,701 ($255,000). “Table for Six,” which chronicles a family’s holiday gathering where food, love, friendship, jealousy and relationships are on the menu, had originally been planned as a dish to be served at Chinese New Year, in February. And producers had assembled a cast of major Hong Kong and regional talents, including Dayo Wong, Stephy Tang, Louise Cheung, Ivana Wong, Lin Min-Chen and Chan Charm Man.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief A weekend concert by Hong Kong acting and singing superstar Andy Lau Tak-wah attracted a record-breaking 350 million viewers on Douyin, the mainland Chinese sister company of TikTok. The concert ran for two hours and attracted 100 million viewers in the first 30 minutes, with tens of millions more joining by the end. The figures beat Lau’s own previous record on the platform, which he set in July last year at a concert to celebrate his 40 years in the business. The South China Morning Post said the record numbers were swelled by a recent wave of nostalgia for Canto-pop or Cantonese-language contemporary music, though the paper also noted that Lau also performed a couple of Mandarin-language classics.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Art-house title “Return to Dust” was a surprise weekend winner, topping the mainland China box office in its ninth weekend of release. The astonishing feat occurred on an otherwise depressed weekend in which China’s cinema box office dipped to a three-month low. This reflected the summer season winding to an end and anti-COVID measures once again forcing major Chinese cities into retreat. Data from consultancy Artisan Gateway showed “Return” grossing $5.3 million (RMB36.2 million) between Friday and Sunday. Those three days accounted for nearly half of the $12.7 million (RMB87.4 million) cumulative total it has earned since release on July 8, 2022.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief South Korea’s cinema box office slipped to its lowest level since mid-May as local film “6/45” took the top spot with just $3.06 million over the weekend in its second week of release. Comedy “6/45” was released a week earlier and scored $2.74 million in its opening weekend, according to data from Kobis, the tracking service operated by the Korean Film Council (KOFIC). The latest weekend, then, represents an 11% improvement for the title. It increased its share of the market to 45% during the latest weekend and advanced its cumulative total to $8.36 million. Depressed by a lack of significant new releases, the nationwide box office over the Friday to Sunday period, however, dropped to $6.75 million. This was the lowest scoring weekend since the first half of May.

This was yet another soft weekend at the international box office with no major fresh titles and as summer fully closes out in Europe and beyond.

Strictly Come Dancing's four new professionals are set to be introduced to viewers in a cinematic routine filmed alongside the returning cast. European cup winner Vito Coppola, Chinese national champion Carlos Gu, former Under-21 British national champion Lauren Oakley and Latin dance champion Michelle Tsiakkas complete the show's largest-ever line-up of 20 pros this year.They join the returning Dianne Buswell, Nadiya Bychkova, Graziano Di Prima, Amy Dowden, Karen Hauer, Katya Jones, Neil Jones, Nikita Kuzmin, Cameron Lombard, Gorka Marquez, Luba Mushtuk, Giovanni Pernice, Jowita Przystal, Johannes Radebe, Kai Widdrington and Nancy Xu.The introductory routine will form part of the Strictly Come Dancing launch show airing on BBC One and iPlayer on 17 September.

box office, there is a near-term question mark about what will happen next: Will recovery stall due to a paucity of Hollywood tentpole movies? Or will international theatrical decouple and find new drivers to maintain the momentum? The good news is that most of the international market’s top territories are now fully open and operating without significant restrictions on seating capacity. These include the U.K. and Ireland, Japan, France, Germany, Spain, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico and Brazil. The smaller number of territories still laboring under restrictions nevertheless include some valuable ones: China, Turkey, Argentina, Hong Kong and Russia.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief South Korea’s leading entertainment group CJ ENM has appointed Steve W. Chung as its global chief growth officer. He will be based in Los Angeles. Previously, Chung served as chief growth officer at Fox Corporation. Prior to that Chung was the founder and CEO of Frankly, a publicly-traded media tech company based in San Francisco. He was also a venture capitalist in Silicon Valley and an executive producer in China.  Chung currently serves as a board member of the non-profit National Asia Pacific Center on Aging (NAPCA) and received his B.A from Harvard College and an M.B.A. from Stanford University.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief The delayed 46th edition of the Hong Kong International Film Festival wrapped Wednesday with the award of 13 prizes for its young filmmaker, documentary and shorts competitions. Hailed by the jury as “one of this year’s most distinguished films both creatively and artistically,” Qiu Jiongjiong’s “A New Old Play” was named best film for the Young Cinema Competition (Chinese Language). “A New Old Play” is a tale of a family of Sichuan Opera artists living through a tumultuous era. It also collected the FIPRESCI Prize, with the jury commending the film for “its masterful approach and inventive visual style.”  In the global category, Palestinian director Maha Haj’s “Mediterranean Fever” was chosen as the Firebird Award winner for being “an all-rounded gem that is at once a thriller, social comedy, and odd couple bromance.” 

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Smart phone usage is key to music listeners in parts of East Asia, but only a minority of users are committed subscribers to streaming services. That apparent contradiction may explain the rise of mini-subscriptions in the region. “Some 81% of music listeners in Malaysia use smartphones as their go-to music listening devices in a typical month, yet only 31% of music streamers in Malaysia pay for a streaming subscription,” says new report from consultancy firm Luminate. The firm’s latest Music 360 Study examines music consumption habits and preferences in a selection of Asia-Pacific markets, including South Korea, Japan, Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Malaysia, but excluding China, India, Singapore and Australia. 

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief After more than a decade of losses, Chinese video streamer iQiyi Tuesday unveiled another improved quarter. But its problems are scarcely in the rear-mirror and it simultaneously announced that it will raise a further $500 million of capital. Revenues in the April to June 2022 period, the second quarter of iQiyi’s financial year, dropped by 13% to RMB 6.66 billion. Net losses for the quarter weighed in at RMB214 million. That was a massive reduction compared with the RMB1.40 deficit recorded in the equivalent quarter in 2021. But it also represented a return to loss after recording a maiden first quarter profit – RMB169 million – in the January to March period.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief “Coo-Coo 043,” a family drama set in the world of racing pigeons, has been set as the opening film of the 2022 Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival. The closing film is comedy “Marry My Dead Body.”  “Coo-Coo 043” is the second film directed by Chan Ching-lin (“The Island That All Flow By”) and stars Golden Bell Awards winners Yu An-shun and Yang Li-yin, along with Golden Harvest Awards best new performer Hu Jhih-ciang and emerging new talent Rimong Ihwar. Chan was previously nominated for Golden Horse Awards best short film for “A Breath From the Bottom,” and as best new director with his feature debut “The Island That All Flow By.” As a work in progress, “Coo-Coo 043” previously participated in the 2021 Golden Horse Film Project Promotion.