“Successor,” a Chinese-produced comedy drama about escape from poverty, opened on top of the mainland China box office over the latest weekend. “Despicable Me 4,” performed well, but landed only in third position.
Data from consultancy firm Artisan Gateway shows “Successor” earned RMB358 million ($50.4 million) between Friday and Sunday. The film charts the ups and downs of a poor dad and a hardworking mom, living in a broken yard and seemingly having fallen behind others on the road to prosperity.
According to an official synopsis, “Ma Chenggang and Ma Chunlan, ride their donkey to work and see their son, Ma Jiye, as their only hope of turning their fate around. Jiye is very promising, excelling academically every year. He is tough and determined. But as Jiye grows up, he perceives that the people around him are becoming more and more strange.”
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The film is co-directed by Yan Fei and Peng Damo (“Hello, Mr Billionaire,” “Goodbye, Mr Loser”) and stars Shen Teng, Ma Li, Shi Pengyuan, Sa Rina and Xiao Bochen.
Chinese ticketing agency Maoyan forecasts that it will continue to play strongly and achieve a lifetime gross of RMB1.6 billion ($220 million).
“A Place Called Silence,” last week’s top film, slipped to second but dropped only 22% week-on-week. It earned $32.0 million for a cumulative of $121 million since July 3.
“Despicable Me 4” earned $17.7 million in three days. That is far behind the performance of its predecessor “Despicable Me 3,” which opened in the same time slot in 2017 with $64 million and went on to accumulate $158 million. Maoyan’s forecast for the new film is RMB370 million or $51 million, on a par with “Kung Fu Panda 4” and “Dune,” currently the second and third-ranked Hollywood films of the year in China (with RMB373 million and RMB353 million, respectively).
There was a large gap to the lower-ranked titles. Bona Film’s Jackie Chan-starring “A Legend” officially opened on Wednesday (July 10) and earned $2.8 million between Friday and Sunday. Including previews and the early start, it finished Sunday with a total of $9.8 million. The Stanley Tong-directed follow-on to Chan and Tong’s previous “The Myth” is a time-traveling confection that has attracted negative publicity for its use of AI and VFX to de-age the 70-year-old Chan.
Pixar animation film, “Inside Out 2” took $2.3 million as it slipped from second place to fifth. Since releasing on June 21 in China, it has accumulated $43.1 million.
The strength of the three front-runners lifted the overall weekend box office in China to $111 million. The running total in China now stands at $3.61 billion. That is 14% adrift of the year-to-date score at the same point in 2023. It is also behind Comscore’s $4.11 billion estimate of the current North American total in 2024.
