China Box Office Thread | Oppenheimer-August 30

[ecstasy]

Should good viewing. I love wacthing bad movies, it gives me plenty of ammunition.

There's plenty in The Expatriate.

[A Marvel Fanboy]

From Robert D. Cain at China Film Biz:

http://chinafilmbiz.wordpress.com/2012/10/08/well-be-right-back-after-this-sarft-holiday-break

In the absence of official word, I’ll go out on a limb and offer my best guess as to what did occur in China over the past week and a half. Bear in mind that the figures below are only as accurate as my back-channel sources. Official numbers should be out in the next day or two, at which point I’ll provide an update.

First, Looper did open well in China, but it came nowhere close to the US $25 million figure that was initially reported by the Hollywood trades and then picked up by more than 100 news outlets around the world. While the film did set several notable precedents, it didn’t break any box office records, and it now appears that my initial estimate of $4.3 million for Looper’s opening weekend was just about right.

The National Day holiday week of October 1^st through 7^th saw roughly $60 million in aggregate ticket sales, making it only the 8^th best week of the year so far. Given the high expectations exhibitors had coming in to the week, they were likely disappointed by this result.

China’s year-to-date box office tally probably reached, or at least came very close to, the $2 billion mark last weekend. By the third week of October it will surpass last year’s record total of $2.06 billion. Had it not been for the bucket of ice SARFT dumped on the country’s sizzling box office growth by imposing its 2-month summer blackout of Hollywood blockbusters, the year-to-date total would now be more than $2.2 billion and China would have a shot at cracking $3 billion by year’s end. As it stands now I’m projecting a year-end total in the $2.7 billion to $2.8 billion range.

DMG pulled off several coups with Looper last week, getting a film that was clearly American (with Chinese flavor) released during a blackout week when Hollywood studio films were strictly prohibited. DMG also managed to obtain for Looper the first U.S.-China day-and-date release since Madagascar 3 opened in June. And DMG’s connections enabled it to achieve a strong screen count during an extremely competitive frame, and should enable it to keep the film running longer in China than most other American films. Although Looper’s China gross won’t come close to matching its U.S. total, it will likely wind up as one of the best indexing U.S. films in China this year.

Also of note: Lionsgate’s The Expendables 2 ended its spectacular run on Sunday, winding up at an estimated $53.6 million, which would put it ahead of The Amazing Spider-Man and just behind The Dark Knight Rises for China’s 9th best performance in 2012. Not bad for a film that grossed $84 million in North America.

Thanks to Cain for the head up.

[A Marvel Fanboy]

Possible foreign release schedule for rest of Oct.:

12th

Cold light of the day (US.)

The Expatriate

(US.)

King of Fighters (Taiwan)

Bait 3D (AU.)

16th

Anna Karenina (UK.)

18th

L'appât (Ca.)

20th

Total Recall (US.)

23th

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1 (US.)

25th

The Bourne Legacy (US.)

TBD:

RE5 (US.)

[A Marvel Fanboy]

This Friday, 10 new releases:

http://news.mtime.com/2012/10/08/1498768.html

[Fake]

I wonder where will Skyfall land....

Edited October 9, 2012 by Fake

[The Toymaker]

Possible foreign release schedule for rest of Oct.:

12th

Cold light of the day (US.)

The Expatriate

(US.)

20th

Total Recall (US.)

23th

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1 (US.)

25th

The Bourne Legacy (US.)

TBD:

RE5 (US.)

I'll be going to see all of these movies most probably. I think having Resident Evil movies play here is totally pointless because all the blood will be cut. Looks like I have a bust schedule.

[JCS]

This Friday, 10 new releases:

http://news.mtime.co...08/1498768.html

That Shark 3D film looks hilariously awful!

[The Toymaker]

It can only be described as shit. I hope my wife doesn't want to see it. That'll be a shameful watch.

[The Toymaker]

Oh, saw Taken 2 today at 11:30am. Pretty early and I thought people would be at work, but it had about 15 people in there. Theater was quite small, about a 60 seater. Why o' why do people take their 3 year-old daughters to the violent action thriller that is TAKEN 2?????!! Started talking from the first to the last minute at which point she started to cry, and the dad just took his jolly old time to remove the bitch. I know I say this a lot, but Chinese people have no respect for anyone else's enjoyment at all. It's weird, because if you move just a few miles in Hong Kong, people are respectful again.

[Bob Violence]

I'll be going to see all of these movies most probably. I think having Resident Evil movies play here is totally pointless because all the blood will be cut. Looks like I have a bust schedule.

Lots of blood in the Chinese version of RE4. Even more in Expendables 2, which had actual human characters (not just zombies) getting bloodily mowed down and even blown apart. Even if it was cut (I haven't seen any other version to compare), it was still hard-R material. RE5 will probably have some cuts but I doubt it'll be butchered. The censors seem to be accommodating themselves to a certain level of gore, at least in foreign films. Of course I don't expect to see lingering, graphic disembowellings anytime soon. Edited October 9, 2012 by Bob Violence

[A Marvel Fanboy]

Edited October 9, 2012 by firedeep

[The Toymaker]

Lots of blood in the Chinese version of RE4. Even more in Expendables 2, which had actual human characters (not just zombies) getting bloodily mowed down and even blown apart. Even if it was cut (I haven't seen any other version to compare), it was still hard-R material. RE5 will probably have some cuts but I doubt it'll be butchered. The censors seem to be accommodating themselves to a certain level of gore, at least in foreign films. Of course I don't expect to see lingering, graphic disembowellings anytime soon.

Nah, there wasn't much blood in TE2 at all, and TE1 was cut to the nth degree. The censors are ruining cinema here.

[The Toymaker]

I've added up the admissions for TE2 every week and I get 10,289,522. How did you get to 10,423,300?Our yuan figures are the same, but the dollar one is not.

[Bob Violence]

Nah, there wasn't much blood in TE2 at all, and TE1 was cut to the nth degree. The censors are ruining cinema here.

I dunno, maybe I'm misremembering, but I recall plenty of bullet impacts with visible blood, and within the first five minutes someone fires a truck-mounted machine gun and the target's head blows up. (That brought a big "ohhhhhhh" from the opening-night crowd.) Expendables 1 was heavily cut, but that was two years ago and the censors' standards are hardly that rigid. There was stuff cut out of The Grey and Seediq Bale earlier this year that was less violent than what you could see in Expendables 2. It could well just be a matter of pulling the right strings. Edited October 9, 2012 by Bob Violence

[A Marvel Fanboy]

I've added up the admissions for TE2 every week and I get 10,289,522. How did you get to 10,423,300?

Our yuan figures are the same, but the dollar one is not.

http://e.weibo.com/movieranking

[The Toymaker]

I dunno, maybe I'm misremembering, but I recall plenty of bullet impacts with visible blood, and within the first five minutes someone fires a truck-mounted machine gun and the target's head blows up. (That brought a big "ohhhhhhh" from the opening-night crowd.) Expendables 1 was heavily cut, but that was two years ago and the censors' standards are hardly that rigid. There was stuff cut out of The Grey and Seediq Bale earlier this year that was less violent than what you could see in Expendables 2. It could well just be a matter of pulling the right strings.

Nothing should be cut, at all. Parents should exercise some responsibility themselves.

[The Toymaker]

http://e.weibo.com/movieranking

Hmmm, well ok.

Do you have the admissions for week 1, 2 and 3? I think I may need to check those again...

[fmpro]

Thanks for the update firedeep

[A Marvel Fanboy]

Hmmm, well ok.

Do you have the admissions for week 1, 2 and 3? I think I may need to check those again...

Just check previous weeks in the link above.

Thanks for the update firedeep

[Bob Violence]

Nothing should be cut, at all. Parents should exercise some responsibility themselves.

Yes, that goes without saying. It's also probably ages away, unfortunately. Maybe within a decade or two they'll loosen up to the level of, say, Singapore; I can't say I have higher hopes than that. The obvious first step would be a rating system, but they've been dragging their feet on that for years, leading to the ridiculous hypocrisy of pretending that something like Expendables 2 or Dangerous Liaisons is as much an "all ages" film as Sammy's Adventure. Edited October 9, 2012 by Bob Violence