‘Soul’ Still Hitting High Notes; ‘Croods: A New Age’ Tops $100M Overseas; ‘The Little Things’ Cops $7.6M WW Bow – International Box Office

No North American movie company is more closely linked to the Chinese film industry’s fortunes than Imax Corp. The Ontario-based giant-screen exhibitor has more than 700 Imax theaters in China — nearly half its global total of 1,500 — and the company has said it plans to add as many as 400 new theaters there over the next three years.

On Wednesday, Chinese New Year box office achieved yet another new milestone with grosses for the holiday period growing to an estimated RMB 7.78B ($1.2B). This beats the previous all-time high set during the comparable 2019 holiday (RMB 5.9B). China often outdoes itself, but the fact that 2021’s Lunar New Year frame came with Covid capacity restrictions makes the performance even more staggering.

Shares in Imax surged after China's Lunar New Year holiday propelled tentpoles like Detective Chinatown 3 and Hi, Mom to blowout box office performances. Market analysts and beleaguered North American exhibitors are watching China's holiday opening weekend this year for signs of an eventual full recovery globally from the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Refresh for latest…: Chinese moviegoers ushered in the Year of the Ox with the colossal three-day debut of Detective Chinatown 3 grossing an estimated RMB 2.56B ($397M). This tops Avengers: Endgame’s 2019 five-day China bow of RMB 2.22B to make DC3 not only the biggest opener in Chinese history, but also giving it bragging rights to the biggest opening weekend ever in a single market — overtaking Endgame’s North American launch of $357M from April 2019.

Rebecca Davis editorChina made history this weekend with record sales of nearly $775 million (RMB50 billion) within the first three days of the Chinese New Year holiday, led by an incredible $424 million (RMB2.74 billion) debut from “Detective Chinatown 3.”This marked the first time the country’s national box office has ever broken RMB1 billion ($155 million) a day for three consecutive days, a feat achieved despite caps on max theater capacity at 75% in most of the country and 50% in areas

A year after Covid raged in China, the country’s box office is all sewn up and back together with Detective Chinatown 3 besting Avengers: Endgame‘s U.S./Canada all-time opening with a $394M weekend. But here in the states, we’re still trying to get the pandemic under control, and winter storms which impacted 100 million Americans according to the National Weather Service didn’t help over a four-day Valentine’s Day/Presidents’ Day weekend which is historically a lucrative time.

Rebecca Davis editorThe world’s largest film market is living up to its title with world-record-setting sales.

Talk about pent-up demand. Detective Chinatown 3, which was originally scheduled to hit Chinese cinemas during the Lunar New Year period in 2020, has sprung out of the gate today with an astonishing Maoyan-estimated RMB 1.05B ($163M) to score the biggest opening-day gross ever of any movie in a single market.

China’s box office is primed for a sparkling Lunar New Year frame as new titles start rollout on Friday. As we noted this past Sunday, pre-sales had alread begun to pop, with threequel Detective Chinatown 3 in the lead. The film from Chen Sicheng as of 11:30PM local time on Thursday had hit over RMB 673M ($104M) in advance tickets for opening day Friday and more than RMB 950M ($147M) for the first week, according to Maoyan.

China's comedy tentpole Detective Chinatown 3 is already doing gangbusters business ahead of its release on Friday, the first day of the lucrative Lunar New Year holiday in the country. The wildly anticipated franchise sequel has earned $85 million (RMB 548 million) in advance ticket sales, according to Artisan Gateway, which means Avengers: Endgame's all-time China presales sales record of $95.5 million (RMB 615.3 million) is well within striking distance.

Disney/Pixar’s Soul continues to shine overseas with a $96.2M cume after seven frames. In 11 markets this session, the Pete Docter-helmed original added $6.9M to its international box office kitty with No. 1s again in Russia and Korea. In China, it has surpassed Incredibles 2 to become the market’s 2nd highest-grossing Pixar title ever.

Fucked Up have shared new album ‘Year Of The Horse’ – listen to its 19-minute first track below.READ MORE: Get in the pit: the best hardcore albums of all time‘Year Of The Horse’ is the latest in the band’s Zodiac series of albums, released periodically to coincide with the Chinese new year.

Tale of Immortal has hit an all-time high peak player count of 172,000 on Steam.The early-access game, which describes itself as an open-world sandbox, was released last week.This player count puts Tale of Immortal in the top five most played games on Steam, above popular games including Apex Legends, Grand Theft Auto V and Rust. Currently Tale of Immortal is only available to play in simplified Chinese.