The Chinese mainland box office is highly likely to achieve its goal of breaking 20 billion yuan ($3.05 billion) in 2020 as several highly qualified films are seeing good results after their release in late December.
As of 2pm on Sunday, the mainland box office for the year of 2020 has reached 19.344 billion yuan, 656 million yuan short of the annual goal.
Currently, the box offices of two US’ big-budget films, The Rescue and Wonder Woman 1984, were lower than expected. Chinese costume fantasy film The Yin-Yang Master: Dream of Eternity, which premiered on Friday, is also suffering an unpredictable fate due to its polarized reviews.
Pixar Animation Studios’ film Soul debuted in mainland cinemas on Friday and has gained a lot of praise, but its low row piece rate does not allow it to contribute to the overall box office. It has earned 29.7 million yuan as of Sunday afternoon. Some Chinese netizens commented on China’s Twitter-like Sina Weibo to call for a higher row piece rate for the “warm and high-scored” film.
The box office responsibility has fallen on the shoulders of Shock Wave 2 and A Little Red Flower, and the two (especially the screening of Shock Wave 2) have the potential.
Just like many filmmakers anticipated, the Chinese action crime thriller Shock Wave 2, directed by Herman Yau and starred by veteran Hong Kong actors Andy Lau and Lau Ching-wan, deserves a high rating and might become the box office winner in December.
According to Chinese’s largest ticket platform Maoyan, Shock Wave 2 has led the mainland box office since Thursday, reaching 359 million yuan on its fourth day of screening. It also earned an 8.0/10 high score on Douban, China’s review site.
Shock Wave 2, the sequel to the hit 2017 film Shock Wave, tells the story of how a former bomb disposal officer played by Lau regains their original intention of being a policeman and helps the police who tried to stop a terrorist plot after suffering amnesia caused by an explosion accident.
In recent years, the reputation of Hong Kong movies are showing a declining trend, and most of them are still following old routines without innovation.
However, the film technique of Shock Wave 2 is different from previous Hong Kong films. The whole plot of this movie is not tardy and sluggish. The imaginary airport explosion screen at the beginning has already attracted the attention of the audience. The subsequent storylines show a lot of twists, giving the audience much surprise. The film does not blindly show details of dismantling bombs nor create individual heroism, but show a real and down-to-earth image of a bomb disposal officer.
The film has the potential of breaking 1 billion yuan even amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Another upcoming film, A Little Red Flower, scheduled to be released in cinemas on Thursday, has already sold 100 million yuan in a pre-sale event on Saturday.
The film starring Jackson Yee, the protagonist of Chinese romantic crime film Better Days, and Liu Haocun, a new rising star who appeared in Zhang Yimou’s film One Second, tells a warm and realistic story of two families who have family members fighting cancer.
The protagonists’ high popularity and the film’s warm story will help it reap good results at the box office.
Promotional material of Shock Wave 2 Photo: VCG
