- Those Hong Kong Sunday box office numbers are out, and at least two of my predictions were correct. Beowulf did indeed take the top spot with a strong HK$1 million from 40 screens, although the IMAX and 3D showings, which account for at least 4 screens in Hong Kong, are charging people double the money for the film. The animated film has a respectable 4-day total of HK$3.72 million.

I was right about Bullet and Brain, which didn’t see any significant rise in box office with a HK$210,000 take from 27 screens on Sunday, making its weekend take HK$940,000. This caused it to be bumped to 4th place, thanks to a dramatic increase for Tokyo Tower (HK$330,000 from 13 screens with no ticket price inflation for a 4-day total of HK$1.06 million) and the continuing strong showing by Lust, Caution. With another HK$250,000 from 31 screens in the bank, Ang Lee’s erotic espionage drama managed to cross the HK$45 million line on Sunday.

Derek Kwok’s The Pye-Dog (which I saw today and sadly was not blown away by) did slightly better during the weekend with just HK$130,000 from 28 screens on Sunday. After 4 days, the character drama with Eason Chan has made only HK$750,000, including previews. The weekend’s other limited release is David Cronenberg’s Eastern Promises did OK, with HK$62,000 from 5 screens on Sunday for a 4-day take of HK$200,000. I’m contemplating whether to go watch it as I type now.

(HK$7.8=US$1)

- Japanese box office figures also came out from Box Office Mojo. At roughly the same exchange rate from last week (anything less than a 1 yen-difference would be considered roughly the same around here), The Sky of Love dropped by only a modest 23%. It’s set to pass the 2 billion yen mark probably by yesterday, and on par to pass the 3 billion yen mark as well. Meanwhile, now I realized that I screwed up with reading the rankings yesterday and reported that Always 2 is at 3rd place. With a drop of 34%, the hit sequel is actually at 2nd place with a current total of 2.19 billion yen and will definitely surpass the first film’s gross.

With a drop of 44%, I may be wrong about The Bourne Ultimatum being a big hit, but at least I’ll be right about it passing the 1 billion yen-mark. A number someone should verify is the screen count of the Yakusho Koji starrer Zo No Naka. Somehow, the film managed to lose 260 screens and now has a huge per-screen average.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 20th, 2007 at 8:40 pm and is filed under Japan, Hong Kong, box office. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.