Chinese comedy film "Detective Chinatown 3" has seen its pre-sale box office exceed 100 million yuan ($15 million) ahead of the Spring Festival, or the Chinese Lunar New Year, according to the Chinese ticketing platform Maoyan.

The much-anticipated movie, directed by Chinese actor and filmmaker Chen Sicheng, has been leading the advance sales chart for the upcoming week-long Spring Festival holiday, contributing over two-thirds of the total bookings, data from Maoyan showed on Sunday.

The movie is a sequel to the 2018 comedy hit "Detective Chinatown 2," which raked in nearly 3.4 billion yuan at the Chinese box office. More than 4 million Maoyan users have expressed interest in seeing the upcoming film that had been scheduled to hit theaters during the 2020 Spring Festival holiday but was forced to a postponement due to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The other six films to join the competition are time travel comedy "Hi, Mom," action film "A Writer's Odyssey," mobile game turned fantasy film "The Yinyang Master," and comedy-drama "Endgame," as well as animated films "Boonie Bears: The Wild Life" and "New Gods: Nezha Reborn."

China's box office continued to see robust growth into 2021 after scoring a record high for New Year's Day earnings. The total box office revenue so far in 2021 has exceeded 3.2 billion yuan.

As the first such moviegoing period following the COVID-19 outbreak, the upcoming holiday is of great importance to China's film industry and will be seen as a further hallmark of the recovery of the country's box office market.

This year's Chinese lunar New Year falls on February 12. The advance sales for the seven titles started on Friday.

Read more: 

Chinese mainland's pre-sale box office for Spring Festival achieves $15.56m

(With input from Xinhua)