onebyone
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I don’t remember if it was back in 2008 with New Line Cinemas and Warner Bros./Time Warner Inc.'s Journey to the Center of the Earth or maybe in 2009 with Focus Features' Coraline, but at some point I noted in my old blog (Mendelson’s Memos, back when I was punk rock and not top-40) that at some point there would be a minor controversy over the box office performance of a 3D movie when a record or a milestone would be broken only due to the 3D ticket upcharge.
Ah, the good old days. Anyway, eight years after Avatar made 3D the wave of the future, comparing 3D blockbusters like Warner Bros./Time Warner Inc.'s Wonder Woman to 2D blockbusters like Lionsgate's The Hunger Games is now part of the game. I bring this up because, as of today, Wolf Warrior 2 has out-grossed 20th Century Fox's Avatar, but only if you count those relatively new online ticketing fees.
Long story short, China instigated a new box office tabulation system at the start of this year, one that included the online fees for moviegoers purchasing tickets online. Offhand, this “new” money can add up to 8% to the overall box office. That’s generally not a huge deal, which is why most of the trades and the rest of the media include them when discussing a film’s overall China box office. But for a film as huge as Wu Jing’s Wolf Warrior 2, that 8% means the difference (for now) between a new milestone and a milestone-in-waiting. As of the weekend, Wolf Warrior 2 had earned $716.5 million without the online fees counted. But with the fees, that total is $768.5m. Both are obscene totals, but only one puts it over the $760m domestic gross of James Cameron’s Avatar.
If we count the online fees, and again at this juncture China Film Insider is among the few that don’t, then the nationalistic action sequel has the second-largest single-territory gross for any movie in history behind the $937 million North American total of Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Absent that upcharge, it’s merely in third place, between Titanic ($658m, not adjusted for inflation) and Avatar ($760m, including a brief 2010 reissue). If the “no ticketing fees included” total doesn’t quite make it to $760m (or at least $749m, which is what Avatar made in its initial theatrical release), then the silver medal will arguably have something of a Roger Maris asterisk attached to it. It would’ve been a very different story if Wolf Warrior 2 ended up just over The Force Awakens (which it will not) thanks to the 8% bump.
The $30 million action spectacular, which plays like a Chinese version of the kind of ultraviolent, deeply nationalistic and jingoistic action movie that American audiences have all but taken for granted (complete with an action figure who is something of a solitary bad-*** akin to John McClane or Jack Bauer, albeit one with the eventual support of the utterly righteous Chinese military), has already made 45% more than China’s previous biggest grosser ever, Stephen Chow’s $527m-grossing The Mermaid from last year. And that film made 38% more than Monster Hunt’s $381m in 2015.
No, I’m not saying that a movie will earn $1 billion in China alone next year, but we are clearly seeing a situation (to say nothing of the likes of Journey to the West 2 or Kung Fu Yoga) where the Chinese movie industry is kicking box office butt with their own stuff. That’s bad news for Hollywood exports.
If the Chinese film industry can start cranking out their own action blockbusters or fantasy spectaculars, then they will have that much less use for the American versions. But that’s a long-term conversation, and frankly, I have argued for years that big Hollywood movies that do well in China are (generally) the ones that do well around the world.
For the moment, Wolf Warrior 2 is the biggest grosser in Chinese history, the biggest Chinese movie ever by a healthy margin and the top-grossing single-territory earner of 2017. It might just keep that last title if Star Wars: The Last Jedi can’t take it away.
Wolf Warrior 2 is now the second-biggest single-territory hit of all-time, kinda-sorta. Anyone want to take bets on if we get Wolf Warrior 3 before we get the American remake of Wolf Warrior 2?
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https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottm...ger-than-avatars-domestic-total/#303bf59f2195
