Alan Yuen's directorial debut Firestorm had a mighty start through the last weekend. A $19.28 million in three days definitely renewed the record of mainland performance for Hong Kong films. Ning Hao's No Man's Land dropped to second place with $6.76 million. Overall, the weekend gross finished at $37.74 million, off 5.65 percent from the previous week.
It is now right in the middle of the New Year movie season, but the atmosphere inside mainland cinemas is as cold as the temperature outside. Although many big flicks all hit the screen at the opening of December, the ticket sales remained tepid in the marketplace. With good word-of-mouth, Gravity took in $1.51 million for a cume of $69.17 million. It will be hard for the space epic to move past the record set by Life of Pi. There is still highly-anticipated Personal Tailor and Police Story 2013 to be screened in the remainder of the month, but it stays to be seen whether the annual gross can hit ￥22 billion in the end.
