According to enbase’s China film boxoffice statistics, mainland boxoffice gross in the tenth week (Mar 05-11, 2012) reached $29.42 million, down 10% from last week. Moviegoers this week totaled 5.46 million, a slump of 8% when compared to last week.
"War Horse” maintained the top spot for the second straight week with an outstanding $5.9 million seven day boxoffice cume, and a total $14.72 million after 13 days in release. “A Simple Life” debuted at number two with $5.21 million. “Journey 2: The Mysterious Island”added $3.42 million this week which was good enough for third place. Its total now sits at $56.58 million. Thanks to the strong debut of “A Simple Life”, Hollywood films accounted for 62% of the mainland boxoffice in the tenth week, down 11% compared to last week’s mainland Hollywood film performance.
10 new films entered a fiercely competitive market place during a hotly contested week. Impacted by so many new entries, boxoffice for“War Horse” was down 33% when compared to last week, but that was still good enough to hold on to the top spot. Directed by Ann Hui, Bona’s“A Simple Life”managed to garner the Best Director, Best Actress and Best Actor Awards at the 48thTaiwan Golden Horse Awards along with Best Actress Awards at the 68thVenice International Film Festival. Benefiting from a great reputation from both critics and audiences, “A Simple Life” achieved an impressive opening week gross of $5.21 million, proving that art house films can compete at the mainland boxoffice. Like many Hong Kong filmmakers, Ann Hui came to the mainland to tap into a broader market in the early 2000s. But her first two co-produced films “Jade Goddess of Mercy” (2003) and “The Aunt's Postmodern Life”(2006) both failed to garner boxoffice success with total grosses of $0.97 million and $0.84 million respectively. This might have been due to an over-reaching art-house ambition that failed to connect with audiences. Compared to the opening week gross of “Buddha Mountain” ($3.91 million) which was released in the same time slot last year, “A Simple Life” performed much better.
"Journey 2: The Mysterious Island”which has now been playing for 31 days in the mainland market, came in third place this week, adding $3.42 million for a total of $56.58 million.The Weinstein Company’s“Spy Kids” franchise entry hit screens on Tuesday with a debut of $2.98 million over 6 days, after an 8 year absence from theaters, The eight year lag resulted in a 3D film that performed moderately well in its first week of release. Another Hollywood title “Conan the Barbarian”maintained a descent return at the boxoffice this week, contributing $2.76 million to its total of $5.86 million. “Conan” performed better than “Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol,”with the latter tallying up $2.28 million for an impressive$102.07 million in mainland market so far. Lastly, “The Second Woman”, a suspense film starring Hsu Chi and Shawn Yu, pulled in $2.04 million through its first four days.
According to enbase statistics,“War Horse” continued to lead mainland box office screenings this week, enjoying 16% of the market share in terms of total number of screenings. Benefiting from a high audience attendance, “A Simple Life” took an additional 12% of screenings, having emerged as the dominant screenings leader of the week after a late start on March 8. “Journey 2”and “Spy Kids 4” enjoyed roughly the same number of screenings, with each title accounting for 9% of market share.
Next week (Mar. 12-18, 2012), the films below are set to be released in Mainland China. Leading with local film“Yang Wang Xing Kong”(to be released on 13th March), six films will hit theaters next week. The most highly anticipated of these will be Disney’s “John Carter of Mars”, the 3D space adventure film that is scheduled to hit the silver screen on 16thMarch.
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enbase is an up-to-date database system developed by EntGroup. It contains detailed information on more than 300,000 films and television shows, including information on distributors, directors, cast, etc as well as film box-office records and audience attendance rates.
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