China Box Office: ‘The Flash’ and ‘Elemental’ Make Soft Starts on Debut Weekend

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Coco Lee, a Hong Kong-born singer and songwriter, has died at age 48. She had a career of some 30 years, which included providing the voice of the heroine Mulan in the Mandarin-language version of Disney’s “Mulan.” Lee’s sisters, Carol and Nancy Lee, said in a statement on Facebook and Instagram that Coco had attempted suicide at home on Sunday. She was in a coma since that point and died on Wednesday at Hong Kong’s Queen Mary Hospital. “With great sadness, we are here [to] break the most devastating news: Coco had been suffering from depression for a few years, but her condition deteriorated drastically over the last few months,” the sisters said. “Although Coco sought professional help and did her best to fight depression, sadly that demon inside of her took the better of her.”

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Authorities in The Philippines are weighing a decision on whether to follow the lead taken by Vietnam and ban Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie” movie. Vietnam on Monday announced that it will bar the film’s commercial release due to the movie’s depiction of a map that depicts the “nine dash line,” a disputed representation of China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea. The Philippines, like Vietnam, Brunei and Malaysia, have competing claims in the South China Sea and strongly refute China’s claim to nearly the entire maritime region. “If the invalidated 9-dash line was indeed depicted in the movie ‘Barbie,’ then it is incumbent upon the Movie and Television Review and Classification Board (MTRCB) to ban the same as it denigrates Philippine sovereignty,” said Philippines Senator Francis Tolentino, vice chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee, according to local media reports.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Authorities in Vietnam have banned commercial screenings of Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie.” The Warner Bros. film starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, one of the most anticipated movies of the summer, was set to have been released in the country on July 21. The film contains a scene that depicts a map with the “nine dash line,” a representation of China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea, which Vietnam says violates its sovereignty. Vi Kien Thanh, director general of the Vietnam Cinema Department under the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism, said on Monday that the ban was decided by the National Film Evaluation Council.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Production is now under way on “The Elephant Odyssey,” a major wildlife documentary film that will release in Imax theaters next year. The film, directed by Alice Gu, chronicles the highly unusual trek by a herd of elephants in China that began in early 2020. As the group diverted from their usual habitat and marched over 1,000 km (600 miles) across remote Yunnan Province they attracted global attention, including live-streamed drone footage. They raided grain stores, indulged in impromptu village feasts and messy mud fights, and even gave birth while on the road. Reasons for the herd’s 18-month trek are unclear, with wildlife experts variously pointing to climate change and the failure of conservation efforts.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Chinese mystery drama “Lost in the Stars” expanded in its second week on release and gave China its third biggest box office weekend of the year. The film earned $117 million, according to data from consultancy Artisan Gateway. That was significantly up from its opening weekend of $70.7 million (RMB502 million) a week earlier and enough to make it the second biggest film on the planet, behind “Indiana Jones,” according to Comscore. After two weekends on release, it has accumulated $320 million. “Lost in the Stars” is a Chinese adaptation of a 1990 Russian movie “A Trap for the Lonely Man,” which itself was adapted from a Robert Thomas stage play. It sees a woman disappear while on an overseas trip with her husband. Just as mysteriously, she reappears at the moment that the search for her is running out of steam. But the man refuses to accept that she is the same woman and believes that she is an imposter.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Zhang Yimou, China’s most enduring filmmaker, is joining the worldwide shift by feature film directors into the streaming arena. Zhang, who directed “Full River Red,” the most successful film of 2023 in China, is to be involved with his first TV series. He will executive produce “The First Shot,” his representatives confirmed to Variety. The show is to be directed by Xing Lu and is backed by Tencent Video. It is currently in development, with a tentative air date in 2025. That’s because Zhang has a film directing project with an anticipated Chinese New Year release date, due to begin shooting this summer.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Chinese mystery drama “Lost in the Stars” was the top-grossing film on the planet over the latest weekend – despite playing only a single territory. The film earned $70.7 million (RMB502 million) between Friday and Sunday in mainland China, according to data from consultancy Artisan Gateway. That put it far and away ahead of other Chinese new releases and Hollywood’s holdovers “Transformers: Rise of the Beasts” and “The Flash.” With the Dragon Boat Festival holiday occurring on Thursday, the film was given an unusual one-day advance on the normal releasing pattern in China. Including Thursday takings, the film made a total of $98.3 million (RMB968 million).

our box office analysis last week of the struggles of “The Flash” and Disney/Pixar’s “Elemental,” the DC film suffered from multiple problems, including tepid word-of-mouth upon release, the deep disinterest among casual audiences in DC given its impending reboot, and lead star Ezra Miller’s public scandals, which left Warner Bros. unable to build a marketing campaign around the actor playing the film’s title star like most superhero films.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Shanghai was the venue for the launch of Chinese streaming firm iQiyi’s latest venture into Virtual Reality. Its ‘Luoyang VR Project’ is a studio-based experience in which users are invited to experience up to 12 different entertainment zones in the ancient city of Luoyang in Henan province. Requiring headsets and using a physical space of some 300 square metres, the set-up stimulates the physical experience of high winds, waterfalls and explosions. IQiyi described the project as “the first attempt in the VR industry to integrate different elements from immersive theatre, VR, and original IP,” and said that it leverages “inside-out tracking” technology and other industry-leading, sensory-simulation techniques to build in cars, boats, carriages, and other props. “The upshot is a highly realistic environment that fully immerses the audience in the story,” the company said.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief The 28th edition of the Shanghai TV Festival wrapped up on Friday with its Magnolia Awards presented to a range of TV drama series, documentaries and animation programs. The drama awards were dominated by two shows “A Lifelong Journey” and “Bright Future.” “A Lifelong Journey,” adapted from a novel of the same name by Liang Xiaosheng, tells the story of three generations of one family in China’s Northeast as time moves from the late Cultural Revolution period through to the country’s reform and opening up. With a starry cast and broadcasters including CCTV-1 and Jiangsu Satellite TV, the show is reported to have attracted 310 million viewers at the beginning of 2022. In mainland China, it ran for 58 episodes, while in Hong Kong it played in 35 parts.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief The technical aspects of China’s embrace of smart broadcasting were given a thorough workout this week as part of the ongoing Shanghai Television Festival. Topics covered by keynote speakers included: future broadcasting planning; AI content generation’ big data construction; and the development of ultra-high definition broadcasting. Sun Suchuan, deputy Director-General of the Science and Technology Department of the National Radio & Television Authority explained that the national government has iterated a strategic development plan for the TV sector running until 2035 as well as medium- and long-term technological strategies.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief The members of the international juries that will decide the Magnolia prizes at the ongoing Shanghai Television Festival were Thursday made to do double duty as speakers in public masterclasses that were open to a generation of aspiring documentary and animation makers. David Stephan, jury president in the animation category, along with fellow judges Spencer Ooi and Jia Fou, spoke at length about getting their starts in the business and finding inspiration. “When I studied animation, I didn’t have a textbook available. I saw extremely limited things, so I did further research to make myself understand what I was doing in such a career,” said Jia.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Hong Kong action film “The White Storm: Heaven or Hell” will have its North American premiere at the New York Asian Film Festival, where it is a late addition to the line-up. The festival runs July 14–30, 2023 at Film at Lincoln Center (FLC). Directed by Herman Yau, the film sees Louis Koo, Aaron Kwok and Sean Lau (aka Lau Ching-wan) appear together for the first time. It is set in the ‘Golden Triangle’ region famous for drugs production and trafficking. Kwok plays an undercover cop who infiltrates a drug cartel led by a notorious Thai drug lord (Lau). In classic heroic bloodshed fashion, the two develop a bond of brotherhood. The cop’s only hope of escaping the treacherous jungle region and his ambiguous morality is to somehow contact the superintendent of the Hong Kong Narcotics Bureau, who has solemnly sworn to demolish the cartel once and for all.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief C CGV, a company that is one of the world’s top ten cinema exhibitors and is also a major cinema technology developer, is to raise close to $800 million in order to shore up its finances after a devastating COVID era. The company operates the largest cinema chain in its native South Korea and has significant numbers of screens in Vietnam, Indonesia, Turkey and mainland China, with smaller operations in Myanmar and the U.S. It also owns CJ 4DPlex, which developed the technology for films to be augmented with practical effects, including motion-seats, wind, strobe-lights, simulated-snow, and scents. In addition, its ScreenX system provides screenings that use the side walls of an auditorium to create a 270-degree sensory experience.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce, technology and entertainment giant, said Tuesday that Joseph C. Tsai will succeed Daniel Zhang as chairman of the group. Eddie Wu (aka Wu Yongming) will take over Zhang’s role as group CEO. Both men are veterans of the group. Tsai, owner of the Brooklyn Nets basketball franchise, is currently Alibaba’s executive vice chairman. Wu is one of Alibaba’s founders and was its original chief technology officer in 1999. He has since held the CTO role at key businesses units including Taobao and Alipay and is currently chairman of Taobao and Tmall Group. Zhang, who took over as group chairman from the iconic Jack Ma, is in the process of orchestrating the biggest restructuring in Alibaba’s 24-year history. Alibaba, which has share listings in New York and Hong Kong, is to transform itself into a holding company with stakes in six separate business units that are free to raise their own capital or even go down the IPO route.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Asia Satellite Telecommunications (AsiaSat), a leading operator of satellites, has moved into content distribution with the acquisition of Hong Kong- and U.K.-based TV distributor Lightning International. The diversification was described by AsiaSat as “a strategic move to expand the company’s services and extend its clients’ reach to global audiences through traditional and new distribution platforms including OTT and FAST.” AsiaSat is known to be acquiring 100% of Lightning International, but other deal terms were not disclosed.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief “Barbarian Invasion” director Tan Chi Mui from Malaysia scored a top result from the SIFF Project Market. The market is a component event of the Shanghai International Film Festival, which wrapped up over the weekend. Tan’s “All About Yuyu” was named as the “recommended project for creativity” at the project market’s closing event. The project, which is already being structured as a Malaysia-China coproduction, is a story that combines contemporary wuxia (heroic martial arts) with youth elements. “I want to make a modern wuxia film to recapture the magical feeling I had when watching films during my childhood,” she told local media.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief After a golden age in the 1980s, Chinese filmmakers were quietly discouraged from dabbling in the sci-fi genre – it isn’t real science and authorities did not want youngsters to get confused. That stance changed during the last decade and the Shanghai International Film Festival has just hosted its first sci-fi week, comprising nearly a dozen film screenings and a trio of panel discussions featuring the new luminaries in the sector. Reasons for the revised position of China’s authorities are not hard to understand. Not only was Hollywood getting away with dominating a genre that was popular with Chinese audiences, China in the 21st century has become a global technology powerhouse. Its space program, in particular, is now among the most advanced, capable of a normalized rocket launch schedule, international co-operation and lunar and interplanetary missions.

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media Reporter After struggling at the domestic box office, this weekend’s two major releases — the Warner Bros. superhero adaptation “The Flash” and Disney’s Pixar adventure “Elemental” — failed to catch fire with international audiences. “The Flash” pulled in $75 million in its international box office debut, which doesn’t sound all that bad… except when considering the movie is available in 78 overseas markets. That means it failed to hit $1 million in the vast majority of the territories in play. China led the way with a lackluster $13.8 million, followed by Mexico with $9.4 million, the United Kingdom with $5.3 million, Korea with $3.7 million and Brazil with $3.5 million.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Japanese drama feature “Yoko” won the Golden Goblet best picture award at the Shanghai International Film Festival. The jury Grand Prix was awarded to Spain’s “Muyeres” with China’s Liu Jin winning the best director prize.The trio also collected additional prizes making them the only multiple winners in a ceremony that sprinkled its awards widely. “Yoko,” directed by Kumakiri Kazuyoshi, who earlier this year saw melodramatic “#Manhole” play in Berlin, takes the structure of a road-movie and is a journey of self-discovery of a woman who had been socially isolated in her apartment for many years. Portrayed by global star Rinko Kikuchi (”Babel,” “47 Ronin”), the woman is forced to confront the real world, and herself, when she takes a 658 kilometre cross-country journey to her father’s funeral. Without a cell phone or the money for public transport, she finds herself having to hitch hike. Kikuchi also earned the best actress award.