“A Place Called Silence,” a remake of a crime thriller that debuted at the Busan Film Festival in 2022, began its commercial career in mainland China with a $50 million theatrical debut.
The new film is directed by the same filmmaker, Sam Quah, but with a different cast than his 2022 film. It earned RMB290 million ($40.9 million) between Friday and Sunday, according to data from consultancy Artisan Gateway. It got an early start on Wednesday, collecting $52.8 million over its entire five-day opening run.
The film is structured as a thriller about a masked killer who targets the students of a girls’ school.
Quah previously directed ‘Sheep Without a Shepherd’, an official remake of the Indian ‘Drishyam’, which previously premiered at the top of the Chinese box office in late 2019.
Pixar’s “Inside Out 2” climbed up a few spots, to second position. It earned $6.9 million in its third week (up from $8.9 million in its second frame) and now has a running total of $36.5 million.
In third place was the previous hit ‘Moments We Shared’. It scored $5.2 million, for a three-week total of $63.9 million.
Alibaba Pictures “Welcome to My Side” opened in fourth place with an opening weekend of $4.5 million.
Bona Film Group’s ‘A Legend’ is officially released on Friday. But thanks to its advanced showings, it was already in fifth place last weekend. It earned $4.1 million.
Artisan Gateway calculates that the national box office was worth $70 million this weekend. That’s a jump from last weekend’s $51 million, but still seems to signal a weak start to the summer season. The deficit this year, compared to 2023, is now more than 12%.
The consultancy reports that June brought in just $314 million. That was a 46% decline from June 2023 and represented the weakest month in China so far this year.
For the first half of 2024, China’s gross box office was RMB23.9 billion ($3.4 billion), earned from 550 million visitors. Those were year-over-year declines of 9.0% and 8.9% respectively – and the drop came despite a record-breaking Lunar New Year period of $1.1 billion.
Four Lunar New Year films led the semi-annual market; ‘YOLO’ and ‘Pegasus 2’, both with more than 3 billion RMB, followed by ‘Article 20’ and ‘Boonie Bears 10’, both with more than 2 billion RMB.
“Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire2 was the biggest import and number six overall during the period, with $135 million, followed by the Japanese animated film “The Boy and the Heron” (“111 million), “Kung Fu Panda 4” ($52 .5 million). million) and “Dune: Part Two” ($49.7 million).
