China films beat Hollywood, Aamir flick
BEIJING: New Chinamade flicks beat Hollywood heavyweights Aquaman and Spider-Man: Into the SpiderVerse at the box office over the weekend, with a remake and a panned sequel leading the pack.
Meanwhile, expensive Bollywood flop Thugs of Hindostan failed to redeem itself, with a flaccid opening weekend marking the first Aamir Khan flop in China in years.
Chinese comedy drama Kill Mobile, a remake of the 2016 Italian film Perfect Strangers, rang in the new year at the top of the box office after a US$24.3 million (RM102 million) threeday opening weekend. The directorial debut of screenwriter Yu Miao, it tells the story of the fallout from a dinner party game in which a group of friends decides to share all the messages and calls received over the course of an evening.
Local fantasy sequel, Mojin: The Worm Valley came in second despite just two days in cinemas, bringing in US$14.2 million over the course of Saturday and Sunday.
These awful films of yours are just making more space for Aquaman. Watching this (Mojin: The Worm Valley) felt like dying.
Nevertheless, its haul was poor compared with that of its predecessor, the 2015 hit Mojin: The Lost Legend which that year broke records with a threeday gross of US$93.4 million, marking what was then the third largest opening for a mainland China film. It also became the highest-ever grossing local language IMAX film at that time.
The Worm Valley sequel has been viciously panned by Chinese commentators online, receiving a dismal 3.6 out of 10 aggregate rating from nearly 11,000 users on popular platform Douban. Several dubbed it the worst film of the year. “These awful films of yours are just making more space for Aquaman,” mocked one popular comment, while another noted blithely: “Watching this felt like dying.”
Meanwhile, Aquaman — now in its fourth week in mainland theatres, having opened in China two weeks before the US — continued to draw viewers. It came in third with US$11.3 million. Spider-Verse trailed behind with US$8.4 million.
The Chinese road trip comedy The Morning After opened on Saturday and came in fifth with US$4.97 million. Despite just two days in cinemas and poor reviews, it still narrowly beat Aamir Khan’s Thugs of Hindostan, which took in just US$4.68 million in its three-day opening weekend.
Despite being one of the most expensive Indian movies ever made, Thugs was so universally ridiculed in its native country that Khan has even publicly apologised to audiences for its awfulness. Nearly a quarter of the film was cut for the China release, which runs 43 minutes shorter, at a leaner 124 minutes and has been re-edited to give Khan more screen time.
The star had criss-crossed the country for 11 days doing promos for the film, according to Chinese movie site Mtime. He snapped selfies with fans, learned Chinese Internet slang, ate dumplings on the winter solstice, and even spent Christmas Eve on stage in Beijing flogging the flick — apparently to no avail. The flop breaks his winning streak in China, where his films Dangal, Secret Superstar and 3 Idiots had hit box office gold.
Last year, China’s movie box office revenue rose nine per cent to 60.98 billion yuan (RM37.2 billion), state media reported, a slower pace than the 13.45 per cent clocked for the previous year.
Domestic films recorded ticket sales of 37.9 billion yuan in 2018, accounting for 62 per cent of the total box office, the official Xinhua news agency said, citing data from the State Film Administration. — Agencies
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