Comic films continue to reign at Chinese box office, and the more lo-fi the better
Low-budget comedy sequel trumps bigger films with lavish effects over New Year holiday, continuing a trend that is likely to see directors who play for laughs winning the Lunar New Year holiday box office battle again
Award-winning filmmaker Chen Kaige thought China’s youthful cinema-goers – their average age is 21½ – would embrace the lavish visual effects in his latest project, Legend of the Demon Cat.
But the veteran director’s prediction at last year’s Toronto Film Festival was off, with his film beaten at the box office over the lucrative New Year holidays by a bawdy romantic comedy.
An adaptation of a Japanese novel about paranormal activities in the Tang dynasty, Legend of the Demon Cat has generated a respectable 506 million yuan (US$78 million) since its release on December 22.
But it was easily outgunned by The Ex-Files: the Return of the Exes. The third in a series revolving around young characters sparring and squaring off with their former partners, the film has already grossed 749 million yuan – despite opening a week later and having been made on a much smaller budget than Chen’s VFX-heavy blockbuster.
While not the biggest hit over the festive season – that was Feng Xiaogang’s Youth, with takings of 1.3 billion – The Ex-Files’ daily average gross of nearly 90 million yuan is the highest of films released over the same period.
Numbers for Ex-Files 3, as it is known in China, are expected to rise and the film has not been overshadowed by Friday’s release in the country of Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Chinese film market research firm Entgroup says Ex-Files 3 still had 31 per cent of cinema screenings, just trailing Stars Wars’ 36 per cent. Legend of the Demon Cat is a distant seventh at 2 per cent.
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Provincial cinema support has been crucial for Ex-Files 3. While it has enjoyed a 29.6 per cent share of cineplex screenings in first-tier cities, elsewhere its share is around 33 per cent.
The success of Ex-Files may be a pointer to the likely winners at the box office over the Lunar New Year holiday, when eight domestic films open on February 16.
Detective Chinatown 2, starring Wang Baoqiang and Liu Haoran as two clueless con men fumbling their way through a conspiracy in New York, will be in pole position to cash in. Up against Wang’s clownish antics will be the latest effects-laden entries of the Monster Hunt and Monkey King franchises, as well as canine-heavy caper The Big Rescue.
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And then there’s the original Wolf Warrior himself. Jacky Wu Jing’s latest turn will be in The Faces of My Gene, a comedy about a failing novelist trying to change his fate by travelling across time to meet his ancestors.
Wu plays one of them, a swashbuckling imperial guard called Mei Banfa, a homonym of “No Can Do” in Chinese. The film’s trailer shows Wu striking a typically heroic pose before being clobbered and pinned to the ground by the fumbling protagonist.
While at odds with Wu’s usual on-screen persona, the pratfall is a typical gag in this directorial debut of stage and TV comedian Guo Degang, whose previous foray into cinema was as a co-star of Top Funny Comedian: The Movie – a silly spin-off of an equally silly TV series.
Given how comedies have kept the tills ringing in Chinese cinemas during the past year, Faces might pull off a shock.
