Posters of "Hi, Mom" and "Detective Chinatown 3" are displayed at a theater in Beijing, February 27, 2021. /CFP
A tear-jerker family drama "Hi, Mom" on Saturday beat 2019 sci-fi blockbuster "The Wandering Earth" by amassing 4.69 billion yuan (about $724 million), making to the top three of the all-time ticket sales chart of films screened in China.
With action-comedy "Detective Chinatown 3" taking over U.S. Marvel Studio's superhero film "Avengers: Endgame" with 4.25 billion yuan earlier in the day, all of the top five highest-grossing films screened in China turned out to be domestic productions, according to the box office tracker Maoyan.
It took 16 days for both "Hi, Mom" and "Detective Chinatown 3" to make the breakthrough after their release on the first day of the Chinese New Year. Driven by their excellent performances, the seven-day Spring Festival holiday was hailed as the strongest box office season ever by earning a total of 7.83 billion yuan, one third higher than the same period of 2019 (5.86 billion yuan) and 2018 (5.77 billion yuan).
"Hi, Mom" by the first-time director Jia Ling was based on the director's own experiences in memory of her deceased mother. As the word of mouth spread, the film garnered over 100 million views in theaters, making it the fourth Chinese film to have crossed the 100-million mark after the 2017 action-adventure film "Wolf Warrior 2," the 2019 animated fantasy "Ne Zha" and "The Wandering Earth."
All the top five highest-grossing films screened in China are domestically-made productions as of February 28, 2021. "Wolf Warrior 2" ranks the first at 5.69 billion on the chart, followed by "Ne Zha," "Hi, Mom," "The Wandering Earth" and "Detective Chinatown 3." /Maoyan
Currently, "Wolf Warrior 2" and "Ne Zha" rank the first and second at 5.69 billion yuan and 5.04 billion yuan, respectively, on the chart. Maoyan predicted that "Hi, Mom" will gross about 5.28 billion yuan in this round by March 14.
Chinese film market opened high in 2021 after a long dormant period last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As of Sunday noon, the total sales of the first two months of 2021 had garnered 15.43 billion yuan. As a comparison, the whole year sales of 2020 were 20.31 billion yuan and that of 2019 were 64.15 billion yuan.