Palme d'Or nominee "The Wild Goose Lake" formidably raked in more than 130 million yuan (18 million U.S. dollars) in its first three days, but it still came a distant second to fantasy-adventure drama "Jumanji 2" in the first week of the last month this year.

The week also saw China's annual box office exceeded 60 billion yuan on Friday, 24 days earlier than the last year.

Domestic film noir

"The Wild Goose Lake" is the latest work of director Diao Yinan after his Golden Bear winner "Black Coal, Thin Ice" in 2014. It tells of a gang leader, Zhou Zenong, who is on the run with a hefty bounty on his head.

The drama is considered a rare Chinese neo-noir and, because of this, is regarded as "a challenge to domestic filmgoers"; the film has mixed reviews and an overall rating of 7.1 out of 10 on douban.com, China's leading film review platform.

Although dwarfed by the Hollywood's new product, "The Wild Goose Lake" is still expected to break arthouse film records in the Chinese market.

Easter egg surprise in Jumanji 2

Following up on 2017's blockbuster is "Jumanji 2: The Next Level" which reunites the four teenagers from the first film, as well as their virtual avatars within the virtual world of Jumanji.

Also released on Friday, the adventure, which stars Dwayne Johnson, Kevin Hart, Jack Black and Karen Gillen, topped the weekly box office by earning more than 170 million yuan.

Some eagle-eyed viewers may find the stone pillar sequence in which hundreds of monkeys chase after the heroes familiar. That's because it was inspired by the Zhangjiajie National Forest Park in Central China's Hunan Province - a place better known to filmgoers as the basis for Pandora in James Cameron's "Avatar".

Disney's "Frozen II" remained at the third place by grossing more than 730 million in the past two weeks, with home-produced comedy "Two Tigers" and American murder mystery film "Knives Out" sliding down the list.