China Box Office: PACIFIC RIM Scores Giant Opening For Warners

After a disappointing box office performance on home turf, del Toro's giant robots vs giant monsters mash-up Pacific Rim has proved a huge hit with Chinese audiences, taking RMB55 Million on opening day, building to an impressive 5-day haul of RMB277 million. The film's strong opening has rekindled plans for a sequel, which were dampened slightly by film's luke warm reception in the USA, despite a raft of positive reviews.

Pacific Rim took close to double that of Fast & Furious 6, the fourth in the series to be directed by Justin Lin, despite building on its own strong opening last week with a further RMB154 Million to take its total after 10 days to RMB336 Million. The other big Hollywood hitter in the top 5, Roland Emmerich's White House Down could only squeeze an additional RMB36 Million out of its second week, and now stands at RMB160 Million and is likely to drop quickly from there.

The other notable new entries in this week's chart include two more homegrown animation titles, I Love Wolffy 2 and Kunta, which amassed RMB42 Million and RMB6.7 Million respectively in their opening weekends, with neither likely to mount any serious kind of challenge. Yet another youth drama, Young Style, also debuted, accruing less than RMB16 Million in its first weekend.

Next week sees a slew of domestic titles opening, including The Message and Beijing Blues director Gao Qunshu's action romance Crimes of Passion, starring Angelababy and Huang Xiaoming, and also Tiny Times 2, continuing the adventures of Yang Mi and Amber Kuo's young ladies about town in modern day Shanghai.