China Box Office: 'Hobbs & Shaw' Drops 74 Percent but Still Holds Top Spot

(THR) Fast & Furious Presents — Hobbs & Shaw experienced engine trouble in its second week of release in China but remained in pole position at the box office after snatching another $26.3 million.

Universal's action spinoff of the Fast & Furious franchise, fronted by beefy duo Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham, dropped 74 percent in its second frame and has now collected a solid, if unspectacular, cume of $164.9 million in China, according to analyst Artisan Gateway.

Currently, Hobbs & Shaw is running off the pace of the previous two Fast & Furious releases in China and on current estimates won't get anywhere near the $391 million Furious 7 made in 2015 or the $392 million that The Fate of the Furious took in 2017.

Globally, the David Leitch-directed film has made $684.2 million and should cross the $700 million barrier in the next few days but China is the last major market of release for the tentpole. For comparison, Furious 7 finished at $1.5 billion worldwide and Fast 8 at $1.24 billion.

In second place this week was animated phenomenon Ne Zha, which took another $16 million to give it a huge $664.5 million cume after 5 weeks on release in China. The stellar box office returns were enough to take Ne Zha above February's sci-fi monster hit The Wandering Earth and become the second-biggest film ever at the Chinese box office.

Ne Zha, which has almost singlehandedly turned around the finances of studio Beijing Enlight Media, is the debut film from Yang Yu, a 38-year-old college dropout who became a self-taught animator. The Hollywood Reporter took a deep dive into why the film has become such a colossal hit in China.

Bona Film Group's firefighter hero saga The Bravest remained in third place this week, earning $4.4 million in its fourth frame to give it a cume of $231.3 million.

Two new entries rounded out the top five, with Jacky Gan's slick crime thriller Vortex making $4.3 million to secure fourth spot. The Tony Leung Ka Fai-led drama Midnight Diner took $2.6 million for fifth place.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter by Abid Rahman

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