The Battle At Lake Changjin II (aka Water Gate Bridge) led the Chinese New Year box office on day one today, coming in at an estimated RMB 657.6M ($103.4M). While that’s certainly an enviable single-market one-day score — and is the second-biggest CNY opening day ever — it’s about 35% below the record-breaking debut day of last year’s CNY release Detective Chinatown 3. What’s more, across all movies today, the total was down 12% to RMB 1.49B from RMB 1.69B last year, per Maoyan estimates.
There was indeed pent-up demand when CNY movies began rolling out in 2021, following the Covid-induced cancellation of the lucrative period the year prior which also forced Detective Chinatown 3 to wait a year before release — and that may help explain the drop this time around. It’s also worth recalling that the original Battle At Lake Changjin, which is China’s highest-grossing local title ever, opened just four months ago and ran for a very long time, meaning there’s not been much breathing room since (nor have there been any major Hollywood distractions).
The Battle At Lake Changjin II has a higher social score (for now) than its predecessor, at 9.6 vs 9.5 on Maoyan, but is lower with critics at 7.2 vs 7.4 on Douban. Maoyan currently predicts the sequel will wind up at a total RMB 4.88M ($767M), which is about 15% off the first Battle At Lake Changjin.
As for other titles debuting today, they follow the expected order that we laid out yesterday. Han Han’s Only Fools Rush In landed No. 2 with RMB 234M ($36.8M) and a 9.1 score from Maoyan. It’s followed by comedy Too Cool To Kill at RMB 218.6M ($34.4M) with a 9.2 and uplifting drama Nice View at RMB 189.2M ($29.7M) and a strong 9.5 from Maoyan.
Pre-sales for Wednesday show The Battle At Lake Changjin II in the lead, followed by Too Cool To Kill, Only Fools Rush In, animated kids pic Boonie Bears: Back To Earth and Nice View.
History has shown that it can be difficult to draw conclusions from the first day of Chinese New Year, and it will be interesting to watch whether the Winter Olympics, which kick off on Friday, have an impact on the full week-long holiday. We’ll continue to update.