(THR) MGM’s No Time to Die, Daniel Craig’s swan song as James Bond, added $11.4 million in its second weekend in China’s cinemas, a 60 percent slide from its $28.2 million local debut.
The film has brought in $49.2 million from the Middle Kingdom, with ticketing app Maoyan projecting a $65 million finish. That will make China the Bond movie’s fourth-biggest market, behind the U.K., U.S. and Germany. No Time to Die won’t match Spectre‘s $83.5 million China performance from 2015 though.
Scattered COVID-19 flareups have drained some sales energy from China’s box office in recent weeks. Over the past frame, about 1,750 theaters were closed across some 50 Chinese cities, comprising about 15 percent of the country’s total screen count.
Theater closures can’t explain away the pitiful performance of Paramount’s Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins, however. The film opened to just $1.5 million, failing to crack the weekend’s list of top-five titles. The movie has been available on piracy networks for weeks (it was released in the U.S. digitally back in August), but most of all, Chinese filmgoers seem to simply not like the movie. It scored just 5.8 on Maoyan and 4.3 on Douban — the lowest social scores for a Hollywood release in China since the start of the pandemic.
China’s domestic juggernaut The Battle of Lake Changjin continued to add to its historic box-office total, meanwhile, earning $8.7 million in its sixth weekend, according to data from Artisan Gateway. The Korean War epic has earned $874.1 million, the most of any movie in the world this year.
Legendary Entertainment’s Dune slipped to fifth place in its third weekend with $2.1 million in sales. The Denis Villeneuve-directed sci-fi tentpole has brought in $36.9 million in China to date, with Maoyan forecasting a local finish of about $40 million.
The Chinese audience’s current interest in U.S. studio fare will get a clearer test on Friday with the release of Disney’s Jungle Cruise, starring local favorite Dwayne Johnson.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter by Patrick Brzeski November 7, 2021 8:13pm