"Lost In Hong Kong” has got off to a screaming start at the Chinese box office. It clocked up $70.6 million in its first two days of release, putting it on course for a $100 million weekend.
The comedy opened on Friday with a $31.1 million opening day, which was topped up by $1.6 million of midnight screenings. That made it the largest opening day for a Chinese movie, and the third-largest opening in Chinese history, behind “Furious 7” and “Avengers: Age of Ultron.”
Preliminary Saturday figures from Ent Group show the film hauling in a further $38.4 million on its second day.
Those numbers were achieved on a colossal number of screens, some 20,000, producing 94,000 screenings on Friday and some 95,000 on Saturday.
The second place film, another new opener “The Third Way of Love,” starring Liu Yifei and Bai Beier (who also appears in “Lost in Hong Kong”), managed only $5.31 million in its first two days.
"Lost In Hong Kong” is effectively the third film in a slapsticky franchise that started with “Lost In Journey” and hit the big time with “Lost in Thailand” in late 2012.
The film is directed by and stars Xu Zheng, alongside co-star Wang Baoqiang. Huang Bo, who was in the previous installment, did not continue the journey, but the cast instead added Vicki Zhao in a leading role, while the film also boasts a string of top names from Hong Kong cinema history (including Sam Lee, Eric Kot, Lawrence Cheng, Paul Yip and Bobby Ng, as well as Wong Jing) in cameo roles.
"Lost in Hong Kong” opened with $559,000 in North America for distributor WellGo USA.
The wide opening for “Lost” and the string of wide releases for other Chinese titles over the Mid-Autumn Festival weekend will severely dent future performances of the Hollywood titles on release. “Minions” currently stands on $57.3 million after 14 days, “Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation” on $131 million after 19 days and “Pixels” $15.2 million after 12 days.
Its massive opening topped foreign charts, dwarfing the second-highest grossing release, Universal’s “Everest,” which made $33.8 million from 62 territories. The action film about a disastrous attempt to summit the famous mountain has earned $96.8 million globally. It opened in first place in a dozen countries including Russia, France and Israel.
In third place, Sony’s “Hotel Transylvania 2” picked up $29.2 million across 42 markets in Latin America, the Middle East and Asia. The franchise about a monster hotel is showing impressive growth, improving upon the first film’s results by 150%. The animated comedy also topped stateside charts, breaking records for a September debut with a $47.5 million start. It bows in major markets such as France and Italy on the week of Oct. 7, and in Germany and the United Kingdom on the week of Oct. 16.
Fox’s “Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials” passed the $100 million mark, earning a fourth place finish with $28.4 million. Globally the film has earned $173.5 million. The top five was rounded out by Warner Bros.’ “The Intern,” with the workplace comedy earning $11.8 million from 40 territories.
Notable debuts included the upcoming fantasy adventure “Pan,” which bowed to $1.5 million in Australia. The Neverland epic doesn’t hit the U.S. until Oct. 9, the same week it kicks off in Germany, Russia and Brazil. A China release is scheduled for Oct. 22.