Tiny Times, the directorial debut from novelist Guo Jingming, held firm at the top of the charts on the Mainland, despite only pulling in around half of its first-week take, to bring its box office total to RMB415 million. A sequel is already in post-production and it seems the planned Christmas release will now open as early as next month, to capitalise on the success of this first installment. The week's big clash, however, was between the two high profile new releases, Johnnie To's comedy thriller Blind Detective and Man of Tai Chi, the martial arts tournament flick directed by Keanu Reeves, who appears on screen as the film's villain, opposite Tiger Chen, Karen Mok and The Raid's Iko Uwais. Reeves chose to open his film, which is a Chinese co-production, on the mainland first, ahead of a planned Q4 2013 release in North America, but could only generate RMB17.5 million over its opening weekend. This paled in comparison to Johnny To's reteaming of Andy Lau and Sammi Cheng, which managed a respectable RMB85 million in its first 4 days. Meanwhile, Zack Snyder's superhero monolith, Man of Steel, and the Jet Li/Wen Zhang action comedy Badges of Fury both continued to do decent business in their third week, adding a further RMB67 million and RMB56 million respectively to their totals. Coming out in the next week are Jay Chou's musical gangster romance, The Rooftop, Will Smith's sci-fi debacle, After Earth and a slew of locally produced horror flicks, including Nightmare, The Supernatural Events on Campus and Bunshinsaba 2. Box office figures courtesy of EntGroup |
China Box Office: Johnnie To's BLIND DETECTIVE Bests Keanu's MAN OF TAI CHI