First it was an earth-shattering moment in the history of cinema, then it turned out to be, well, a mistake. Early box office reporting from China suggested that the first-weekend returns for the sci-fi blockbuster Looper, starring Joseph Gordon Levitt and Bruce Willis, were going to be higher that for the film's debut in the US.
That would mean a tectonic shift in the international film business: north America would no longer be the be-all and end-all, and China's emerging financial muscle on the world stage would be confirmed.
That's that, we all thought - goodbye Hollywood, hooray for Chinawood. Only it turned out to be a big steaming pile of wrongness. Apparently local officials - perhaps not as conversant with the intricacies of boxofficemojo.com as we thought – got dollars and yuan mixed up. Looper didn't take nearly as much as everyone thought.