‘Successor’, a comedy drama film that has taken the Chinese box office by storm, will be rolled out internationally from early next month.
The rights to the film have been acquired by CMC Pictures, the Chinese studio behind the monster shark franchise ‘The Meg’. It will have theatrical releases in North America, Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and Benelux, rolling out from August 2.
‘Successor’ charts the ups and downs of a poor father and a hardworking mother, who live in a broken garden and have seemingly fallen behind on the road to prosperity.
The film only officially premiered in Chinese theaters on Tuesday (July 16) and earned an estimated $21 million. But it ended its first day with a cumulative $89 million, thanks to massive previews that helped it dominate China’s most recent weekend charts. The film was shown more than 140,000 times in China on both Saturday and Sunday.
The preview nature of the Saturday release meant that “Successor” did not appear on the worldwide box office charts or on the weekend box office charts compiled by Comscore. But Comscore confirmed that the pic made about $21.5 million in previews on Saturday and another $27.7 million on Sunday. These numbers would have made ‘Successor’ the third biggest movie in the world this weekend, behind only ‘Despicable Me 4’ and ‘Inside Out 2’, despite the film only playing for two days.
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. Production is by Zhang Lebin, Ma Chi, Tian Tian and Zhang Meng.
While films usually arrive in Chinese cinemas on Fridays, local distributors have been known to aggressively change release dates in response to increasing demand. “Presale at the box office [in China] exceeded expectations, so the release was pushed forward,” a source close to CMC said Variety. “This movie is really hilarious. From every aspect it is expected to be a phenomenon.”
Chinese ticket agency Maoyan predicts that “Successor” will continue to play strongly. It has more than doubled its estimate of the film’s potential lifetime gross, from a previous RMB1.6 billion ($220 million) to RMB3.7 billion ($513 million).
According to an official synopsis, “Ma Chenggang and Ma Chunlan ride their donkeys to work and see their son, Ma Jiye, as their only hope to reverse their fate. Jiye is very promising and excels academically every year. He is tough and determined. But as Jiye grows older, he notices that the people around him are becoming increasingly strange.”
Chinese sources provide a list of production credits that includes many of the biggest companies in mainland China’s entertainment scene. They include: China Film Group, Guosi Lianrui Film, Alibaba Film Culture, Ruyi Entertainment, Kaixin Mahua Film, Maoyan Weiyin Media and Wanda Media.
