A poster for movie Crazy Alien. Photo: VCG

A poster for movie The Wandering Earth. Photo: VCG

The Chinese mainland film made 1.43 billion yuan ($212 million) at the box office on its Lunar New Year’s day on February 5, a 11.7 percent increase over last year’s 1.28 billion yuan, a new high. 
 
The one-week Chinese Lunar New Year holiday is the busiest film season of the year in China, and is often compared to the Christmas season in North America. Having pushed the month that has the holiday, usually January or February, to be the highest earning month of the year for a few times, eight new films opened on Tuesday this year, two more than the same period last year and three more than in 2017. 
 
Yet no imported films opened that day even though Hollywood’s blockbusters such as Escape Room, Once Upon A Deadpool, and Bumblebee are still in theaters, they all dropped from over 10 percent in screen share on Monday to less than 0.1 percent on Tuesday, according to Chinese film and TV data app Maoyan. 
 
Chinese mainland director Ning Hao’s sci-fi comedy Crazy Alien topped Tuesday’s box office with 403 million yuan, followed by novelist turned director Han Han’s comedy Pegasus (315 million yuan) and Hong Kang actor-director Stephen Chow’s comedy The New King of Comedy (269 million yuan). 
 
Adapted from Hugo Award winning director Liu Cixin’s short story of the same title, The Wandering Earth ranked with 199 million yuan. To be noticed, the film was promoted by Avatar director James Cameron on his Sina Weibo as he forwarded The Wandering Earth director Guo Fan’s post. “Good luck with your space journey of the Wandering Earth. Good luck with the voyage of Chinese sci-fi films,” Cameron wrote on Weibo.
 
The Cameron co-scripted Alita: Battle Angel is about to hit Chinese mainland theaters on February 22. 
 
 
Global Times