The Battle At Lake Changjin II (aka Water Gate Bridge) led the Chinese New Year box office on day one today, coming in at an estimated RMB 657.6M ($103.4M).
While that’s certainly an enviable single-market one-day score — and is the second-biggest CNY opening day ever — it’s about 35% below the record-breaking debut day of last year’s CNY release Detective Chinatown 3.
What’s more, across all movies today, the total was down 12% to RMB 1.49B from RMB 1.69B last year, per Maoyan estimates.There was indeed pent-up demand when CNY movies began rolling out in 2021, following the Covid-induced cancellation of the lucrative period the year prior which also forced Detective Chinatown 3 to wait a year before release — and that may help explain the drop this time around.
It’s also worth recalling that the original Battle At Lake Changjin, which is China’s highest-grossing local title ever, opened just four months ago and ran for a very long time, meaning there’s not been much breathing room since (nor have there been any major Hollywood distractions).The Battle At Lake Changjin II has a higher social score (for now) than its predecessor, at 9.6 vs 9.5 on Maoyan, but is lower with critics at 7.2 vs 7.4 on Douban.
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