Only three new films open theatrically in China this week—"Big Hero 6" , "Lucky Star 2015" and "Mu Qin De Meng Xiang"—as healthy releases from last week will continue to deliver robust returns.
Even though "Dragon Blade"” started off stronger on February 19, "The Man from Macau 2" and "Wolf Totem" have pulled ahead recently. Both "The Man from Macau 2" and "Dragon Blade" are hovering around the $80 million mark. While neither film will match the huge impact that “The Monkey King” had during the holiday frame, this year’s crop of titles have scored a big victory for China’s film culture.
"Big Hero 6" could end up performing very well in China. After all, Disney’s latest animated effort is already a hit in Japan ($72.1 million) and a modest success in Korea ($19.2 million). Considering that "Big Hero 6" was released way back in November in North America, it’s possible that many Chinese moviegoers will have seen it at home and piracy is obviously impossible to ignore. We don’t expect "Big Hero 6" have enough power to push homegrown titles out of the top spot.
Two Hollywood titles will open next week: "Jupiter Ascending" and "Paddington". Early on, we feel that "Jupiter Ascending" —a movie that represents another commercial dud for The Wachowskis in North American—could be pretty successful based on the strong showing that "Cloud Atlas"—another film from the Wachowskis—had in China.
Phil Contrino, Vice President/Chief Analyst of Boxoffice.com contributed to this article.
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