For 2021, the eight films below will battle it out for box office gold. It is worth noting that, due to the coronavirus-triggered work suspension plaguing the whole of Hollywood, no new Hollywood films will be released this year for the golden Lunar New Year week.

1. Detective Chinatown 3

One of the films whose planned launches during Lunar New Year were scrapped last year due to the Covid-19 outbreak, Detective Chinatown 3 is certain to be a box office winner. The latest instalment in a hugely profitable franchise and the film reaped over 100 million yuan in advance ticket sales 36 hours after advance tickets were released for sale on January 29.

2. A Writer’s Odyssey

Directed by Lu Yang and starring Yang Mi and Lei Jiayin, A Writer’s Odyssey is about a father’s quest to find his missing daughter. To save her, he has to help a mysterious woman assassinate a novelist whose writing creates a surreal world that ends up influencing the father’s quest.

Lu previously co-directed the Korean war epic Sacrifice (2020) with A-list directors Guo Fan and Guan Hu. The special effects company behind A Writer’s Odyssey, More VFX, was credited with making the spectacular scenes in mainland sci-fi blockbuster The Wandering Earth (2019).

The company’s chief executive officer Xu Jian told mainland media that the special effects required in fleshing out the fantasy world in this new movie are even more complicated than those in The Wandering Earth. “Around 700 professionals worked on the special effects for A Writer’s Odyssey,” he said.

3. Hi, Mom

In this time-travel comedy, Jia Ling plays a filial daughter who is plunged into a mental abyss after her mother is severely hurt in an accident. On the verge of a nervous breakdown, she finds herself transported back to the past when her mother was a young woman. The two women become bosom friends and a surreal journey begins.

Co-starring Shen Teng, the film, directed and co-written by veteran comedienne Jia, is a tribute to her late mother.

Failing to see her mother in person before she passed away in 2001, Jia told Chinese media that she made the film to express her grief in losing her. The events portrayed in the film are based on the real-life stories of Jia and her mother.

4. Endgame

Produced by and starring Andy Lau Tak-wah, this black comedy directed and co-written by Rao Xiaozhi is a remake of the 2012 Japanese film Key of Life.

Lau plays an assassin who accidentally swaps identities with a hapless actor played by Xiao Yang, who won over many fans after his mesmerising turn as a movie-buff-turned-murder-suspect in the 2019 sleeper hit Sheep Without a Shepherd. Both characters are forced to reconsider their priorities in life after the swap leads to a chain of bizarre and hilarious encounters.

5. The Yin Yang Master

Directed by Li Weiran and starring A-listers including Chen Kun, Zhou Xun and William Chan Wai-ting, this fantasy film is adapted from the mobile game Onmyoji – and not to be confused with new Netflix release The Yin-Yang Master: Dream of Eternity, which was instead adapted from Baku Yumemakura’s novel series.

The movie revolves around the quest of the half-human fairy Yin Yang Master (played by Chen) to save his home and clan from the attack of enemies from the human and netherworld.

6. Ne Zha

Directed by Zhao Ji, who co-directed the 2019 animation White Snake, the latest Ne Zha protagonist is reincarnated as a motorbike rider in the contemporary world, and has to fend off assassination attempts by various gods that suddenly appear from 3,000 years ago.

Zhao told mainland media he wants to explore how the immortal gods from ancient times would fare in the modern world.

“The film uses a Chinese mythological figure to portray a story about a modern superhero. I hope the audience won’t come to the cinema with Ne Zha’s original image as a child devil in mind. Instead, it’s a story about gods. It is a movie about an ordinary guy whose life is turned upside down due to no fault of his own,” he said.

7. Boonie Bears: The Wild Life

Another of the Lunar New Year films whose launches were scrapped last year, this latest instalment from the hugely popular animation franchise takes the bumbling ursine duo known as Boonie Bears and their bald human friend Qiang into a wild amusement park, where humans can be turned into animals using genetic engineering technology.

Since its first outing in 2012, the franchise has won legions of children fans. The latest one is the eighth in the series.

8. Sunset

While Hollywood movies are absent from the new release line-up for Lunar New Year in mainland China this year, Sunset, a Hungarian film that premiered in 2018, is the only foreign film hoping to break the dominance of local films.

Directed by Laszlo Nemes (known for 2015’s Oscar-winning Son of Saul), this historical drama is set in Budapest before World War I. Hungarian actress Juli Jakab plays 20-year-old orphan Irisz Leiter, on the lookout for a brother she never knew she has. In spite of her delicate features and elegant manner, Irisz boasts a strong survival instinct and uses her wiles to fend off anarchists and hucksters while searching for the brother. 

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