'Warcraft' smashes China's box office records

By Zhang Rui: 0 Comment(s)Print E-mail China.org.cn, June 8, 2016

Fans pack a Wanda theater for the "Warcraft" premiere in Beijing on June 8, 2016. [Photo/ China.org.cn]

The new blockbuster movie "Warcraft," based on the fantasy game World of Warcraft (WoW), opened with record box office numbers at midnight on Tuesday.

The film took in 49.72 million yuan (US$7.56 million) on Tuesday, according to China's official box office supervision department. The statistics have made "Warcraft" the No. 2 top grossing film for midnight opening and the biggest midnight opening of all time on a weekday.

It played on an unprecedented 67.5 percent of all screens in China and had 13,548 showings and 1.26 million admissions. Some cinemas even arranged screenings for 2 a.m. and 4 a.m.

The previous record holder for a midnight showing was "Furious 7," which grossed 52.47 million yuan (US$7.98 million) on a Saturday night.

The film was directed by Duncan Jones and stars Clancy Brown, Travis Fimmel, Paula Patton, Ben Foster, Toby Kebbell, Rob Kazinsky, Burke Duffield, Dominic Cooper and Daniel Wu.

Though facing competition from "X-Men: Apocalypse," which opened on June 3, "Warcraft" will surely benefit from the upcoming Dragon Boat Festival, a three-day holiday from June 9 to 11. During the same period last year, box offices raked in 600 million yuan (US$91.3 million). Industry observers estimated that the film may gross more than 1 billion yuan (US$152.2 million) in its opening week.

1 2 3 4 Next