China's box office sees unusual spike on Qixi Festival
- By Zhang Rui
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E-mail China.org.cn, August 26, 2020
Thanks to a Chinese fantasy romance film's phenomenal performance, China's Qixi Festival box office total hit an unusual new high.
Qixi Festival, or the Chinese equivalent of Valentine's Day, is often exploited to market various products, such as films. The festival falls annually on the 7th day of the 7th month on the Chinese lunar calendar, and for this year, that day falls on Aug. 25. It celebrates the legend of the annual meeting between the mythological figures of the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl.
Two Chinese romance films, "Love You Forever" and "Wild Grass," joined "Little Women," a new cinematic adaptation of the American novel of the same name, for release on Qixi Festival.
Yoyo Yao's "Love You Forever" tells the story of a stubborn man who accidentally gains the ability to travel through time and attempts to use it to fix his love life.
According to Lighthouse, a box office tracker and entertainment big data platform, the film generated a staggering 278 million yuan ($40.22 million) on its opening day, which is the biggest gross ever on Qixi Festival. It is also the biggest opening day haul of the year and the biggest single-day gross in the world for 2020.
Another new film, "Wild Grass" stars actresses Ma Sichun and Zhong Chuxi and actor Huang Jingyu. The film revolves around a group of young strangers bound together by destiny in their pursuit of a better life away from home. It grossed 37.82 million yuan on its debut.
Academy Award-winning "Little Women" earned 11.43 million yuan on its debut.
All three romance films were previously scheduled to release on Feb. 14 but were postponed due to the COVID-19 outbreak.
China's phenomenal blockbuster war epic, "The Eight Hundred," has been performing strongly. On Tuesday, the film earned nearly 191 million yuan, though its content didn't fit the romantic genre. The box office total of the film has surpassed 1.16 billion yuan in China.
The box office total of all films screening on Qixi Festival in China was more than 520 million yuan, a new high and 100 times more than the total box office takings on July 20, when Chinese movie theaters resumed operations after months-long closures amid the COVID-19 outbreak.
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