Chinese crime action film No More Bets headed the mainland China box office for the fourth consecutive weekend, cementing its place as one of the biggest films in the world this year.
Between Friday and Sunday, it earned $33.5 million (RMB241 million), according to data from specialist consultancy firm Artisan Gateway. Global data provider Comscore ranked that as the third highest performance of the weekend anywhere in the world, narrowly behind Barbies $35.3 million.
The latest increment advanced No More Bets cumulative score to $469 million (RMB3.37 billion).
Papa, a comedy about parental efforts to improve their sons education, held an unchanged second place in its second week. It earned $14.9 million over the weekend, a 37% week-on-week decline that gives it a 10-day cumulative of $59.2 million. The film is produced by comedian Huang Bo, who also stars. Huang appears in two of this years other hits, Creation of the Gods and One and Only.
Creation of the Gods I: Kingdom of Storms, which released more than a month ago, proved its resilience again. In third place in its sixth weekend, it earned $14.9 million. That gives it a cumulative of $338 million.
Giant screen provider, Imax reported that, within those weekend scores, Creation of the Gods earned $1.4 million at its venues, for an Imax sub-total of $34.4 million, and that No More Bets scored $830,000 for an Imax sub-total of $12 million.
The highest-ranked new release film in China was Hearts Motive, which scored $4.9 million (RMB 35.5 million) in fourth place. It stars Huang Xiaoming as a whistleblower lawyer who seeks a comeback.
The Woman in the Storm, which released on Aug. 17, climbed to fifth place over the latest weekend. It earned $3.8 million (RMB27.1 million) for an 11-day cumulative of $16.8 million (RMB121 million).
(Narrowly outside the top five in China, Meg 2: The Trench earned $1.3 million for a China cumulative of $120 million. Comscore calculated that the China-U.S production earned $20.3 million planet-wide this weekend and now has a global total of $353 million, with $74 million of that coming from North America.)
After nine consecutive weekends with Chinas nationwide box office clocking in at more than $100 million, the latest weekend fell to $81.9 million, suggesting that the summer season may now be coming to an end and that a shakeup is in prospect.
The next days will see the releases of Oppenheimer (on Wednesday, with Imax screens among the mix) and Gran Turismo (on Friday), as well as Chinese suspense-romance Everything Is Unknown and art-house title Ripples of Life. Advanced ticket sales suggest that Oppenheimer could lead the chart.