Chinese national day holiday box office winners and losers: from My People, My Country to The Captain, patriotism rules
- Holiday box office takings more than doubled, to US$224 million, amid a slew of patriotic releases; two of the three biggest earners have Hong Kong directors
- American films, including animation Abominable, bagged two of 10 national day holiday release slots; another animated film, from China, flopped
China’s cinema box office takings over the national day holiday were more than double those for the same days in 2018, buoyed by a line-up of mostly patriotic new releases to coincide with the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China.
According to China’s largest ticketing app, Maoyan, by the end of October 1 and after two days of mostly sold-out screenings, this year’s national day holiday box office takings were 1.6 billion yuan (US$224 million), more than double last year’s 600 million yuan.
The biggest box office draw was My People, My Country , an ensemble film comprising seven chapters, each by a different director and led by Cannes Palme d’Or winner Chen Kaige. By the end of October 1, the film had taken 700 million yuan.
It recounts milestone events since the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, including the 1997 handover of Hong Kong from the UK to China and the staging of the Summer Olympics in Beijing in 2008.
Ranked second was The Captain, directed by Hong Kong’s Andrew Lau Wai-keung. It reaped 500 million yuan in cinema ticket sales. Based on a true-life event, the film portrays the heroic deeds of a Sichuan Airlines captain who in May 2018 landed a flight after a 20-minute struggle with the loss of cabin pressure. Flying from Chongqing to Lhasa, Tibet, a windscreen broke suddenly at 32,000 feet and the co-pilot was sucked halfway out of the window. None of the passengers was injured in the encounter.