December 15th, 2007
The Golden Rock - December 14th, 2007 Edition
- Time for the opening day numbers from Hong Kong. Yesterday, the first two big Christmas blockbusters - The Warlords and I Am Legend opened, and The Warlords wins the battle. Peter Chan’s war epic was on 72 screens (out of over 200 screens in Hong Kong) and made HK$1.68 million. This is, according to Variety Asia, including the HK$250,000 it made from previews the previous night, which puts its official opening day gross at HK$1.43 million. It’ll probably hit HK$10 million within the week. The question is only: which day?
This means its official opening day only barely beat out Will Smith-starrer I Am Legend, which made HK$1.36 million from 54 screens. This puts the two films’ per-screen average at a head-to-head competition over the weekend, though Warlords will likely win in numbers simply because of the sheer size of the release.
Congratulations to Mad Detective for passing the HK$10 million mark on Thursday. Still on 32 screens (though at a reduced number of shows), the Johnnie To/Wai Ka-Fai crime drama made HK$195,000, and should slow down significantly this weekend thanks to the two big films. Oh, the Chipmunks movie opened with only HK$122,000 from 31 screens. Bummer.
- Variety Asia also reported that The Warlords opened pretty huge in other Asian territories, although I bet that it’ll be a while before it recuperates the actors’ salaries.
- Fairly big news out of Hong Kong (though it’s one day behind): Stephen Fung is planning to direct a film version of the video game Stranglehold. However, he will first have to finish his Stephen Chow-produced dance film and A New Better Tomorrow with Andy Lau and Aaron Kwok, AND the writers’ strike in Hollywood has to end first so he can actually shoot it. Until then, he’s already talked to Daniel Wu and Brandon “Superman” Routh about starring roles, and the story should be about Wu’s Hong Kong cop teaming up with Routh’s American cop.
Sorry, story is only free for Hong Kong IPs.
- Another possible Hong Kong-Hollywood crossover is also in the works, with Orlando Bloom reportedly visiting Hong Kong to meet with Johnnie To about a possible collaboration.
- Under “Japanese drama” news today, the hit Japanese drama Gokusen, starring Yukie Nakama, is seeing a third installment in the Spring. Perhaps not so coincidentally, this comes after her latest drama, Joshi Deka, is yet another flop for the advertisement queen. The hit series is about a high school teacher who’s also the head of an organized crime clan. Natrually, it’s a comedy.
Also, the Spring 2007 hit Japanese drama Proposal Daisakusen is getting a gratuitous 2-hour special after people called in saying they were confused about the ending. I think they just asked for a few minutes, not a damn 2-hour special.
- Under “more promising Japanese film news” today, Swing Girls director Shinobu Yaguchi is finally work on his follow-up film Happy Flight. Finally abandoning his “unlikely people doing unlikely things” formula, Yaguchi’s film will entirely take place on one flight and centers around three characters. I’m there.
- Sorry for doing so much Japanese news, here’s some stuff from China: Turns out China, over its negotiations with the United State government, really am banning American movies for 3 months over piracy and trade issues.