According to China film box office statistics by enbase, mainland box office gross in Week 52(Dec 19-25, 2011) reached $72.67 million, showing 31% box office growth from last month, also 5% increase compared to the same time last year. Moviegoers in this week counted as 10.72 million in total, 24% soaring compared to last month.
The Christmas holiday timeslot raised the curtain this week, box office continued solid performance, and it is expecting this surge to last throughout Chinese New Year season. "The Flowers of War" edged out "Flying Swords of Dragon Gate" to repeat champion in Christmas holiday week with $32.34 million, while its total gross reached to $56.41 million over 11 days run. “Flying Swords of Dragon Gate” maintained the second place, adding $27.75 million for mainland total of $50.17 million. Another local film Xu Jinglei’s “Dear Enemy” debuted $6.54 million in its first three days run. That's topped among the new releases. With the lead of top 3, which are completely local films, the domestic films enjoyed 92% of the market share.
While the Christmas movie season began this week, things really kicked off the week before New Year timeslot. It's no different this year, with two sure-fire hits both reaching theaters last week. Mainland box office ticket sale this week saw 31% growth from last month, also 5% increase compared to the same time last year. But when it comes to the number of moviegoers in this week, that just counted 10.72 million in total, dropping 12.6% compared to the same timeslot of previous year. Not so satisfied as expected. By comparison, last year same timeslot released films “Let the Bullets Fly” and “If You Are the One 2” had total grossed $105.17million and $74.92 million respectively. However the two most anticipated films “Flowers” and "Swords” showed this year just debuted $56.41 million and $50.17 million since last week’s release. It now appears like the two big-budget films this year will not easily finish ahead of last New Year movies “Let the Bullets Fly” and “If You Are the One 2”, which both crossed the line of box office revenue RMB 200 million (more than $26 million) in their first week run last year. Xu Jinglei’s film “Dear Enemy” debuted $6.54 million over three day run. The workplace romance is the second act of Xu Jinglei’s commercial endeavors after last year’s box office triumph “Go Lala Go!”, which is also directed and starred by Xu Jinglei herself.
While a handful of marketing campaign launched before “Flowers” release, it still failed to really break out considering its huge film budget of more than RMB 600 million including shooting and marketing promotion. Whether it could achieve the goal of taking in more than RMB 1 billion at box office or not, we have to be patient until New Year season.
In terms of screening time schedule, the two most serious rivals “The Flowers of War” “Flying Swords of Dragon Gate” continued taking a commanding lead in mainland film market. According to the data issued by enbase, Zhang’ “Flowers” and Xu’ “Swords” enjoyed 36% and 33% of screening time slot respectively. New release “Dear Enemy” took 10% of screening time slot. These three films together represented approximately 80% of the screening schedule time slot during 23-25, December.
In the coming Week 53 (26, Dec 2011- 1, Jan 2012), films as below are set to be released in mainland China.
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