December 10th, 2007
The Golden Rock Box Office Report - 12/10/07
- The Hong Kong Sunday numbers are out (seemingly coming out earlier and earlier after mov3.com went down for good), and Mad Detective takes the weekend again. It didn’t see a very big drop, as the Johnnie To/Wai Ka-Fai film made another HK$806,000 from 36 screens on Sunday for an 11-day total of HK$8.55 million. It’s extremely likely that the film will pass the HK$10 million mark, making it Milkyway’s most successful film since the Election flicks, which were also the last Milkyway category III (no one under 18 admitted) films.
In Love With the Dead, the latest from Danny Pang (of the Pang Brothers), also managed to hang on to second place in the second weekend. However, it only made HK$290,000 from 31 screens on Sunday for an 11-day total of HK$4.29 million. It will likely wrap up its run with a take similar to brother Oxide’s The Detective (I predicted last week that it wouldn’t). More astonishing is the staying power of the Japanese tearjerker Tokyo Tower, which made another HK$220,000 from 12 screens for a 25-day total of HK$4.56 million. With steady word-of-mouth, it may even surpass the Hong Kong gross for Kimura Takuya’s Hero when it’s all over. Meanwhile, the Hollywood comedy The Heartbreak Kid is also enjoying a healthy run as it stays in 3rd place on Sunday with HK$247,000 from 25 screens for an 18-day gross of HK$5.15 million.
The weekend’s only opener on the top 10 is Robert Benton’s Feast of Love, which did OK with HK$124,000 from 10 screens for a 4-day total of HK$450,000. Golden Horse winner Lust, Caution is still alive and well with HK$133,000 from 10 screens on Sunday for a 75-day total of HK$47.65 million, inching ever-so-slowly to HK$48 million. Still, I don’t expect it to pass the HK$50 million mark. Lastly, Andrew Lau’s Hollywood debut The Flock made just HK$42,000 from 16 screens for a 11-day total of just HK$650,000.
Speaking of Hong Kong directors in Hollywood, the Hong Kong Film blog actually mentions that Hong Kong directors’ Hollywood debut don’t fare well in Hong Kong anyway. For instance:
John Woo’s Hard Target - HK$2.56 million
Ringo Lam’s Maximum Risk - HK$2.38 million
Tsui Hark’s Double Team - HK$3.79 million
Ronny Yu’s Warriors of Virtue - HK$430,000
Kirk Wong’s The Big Hit - HK$1.32 million
Peter Chan’s Love Letter - HK$870,000
and of course, to add my own figures - The Pang Brothers’ The Messengers made around HK$4-5 million earlier in the year.
- In South Korea, the Hollywood family flick August Rush (partly financed by CJ Entertainment) made the top spot again, now with 826,000 admissions after two weekends. Lust, Caution continues to roll with over 1.6 million admissions, and expected to continue growing after its wins at the Golden Horse Awards. More over at Korea Pop Wars.
- In Japanese attendance charts, Always 2 have been bumped off its number 1 spot to third place by the new family film A Tale of Mari and Three Puppies (A family film with dogs in natural disasters), while Koizora stays at number 2. Everything below that moves down one place. We’ll see how much business they lost in a day or two.