also opened Friday and came in second for the frame with $8.6 million, while Wanda’s holdover comedyNew Happy Dad and Son 5: My Alien Friend
premiered Saturday and scored fourth for the weekend with $3.5 million, while yet another propaganda project,The holiday sales came as a jolt after China’s exiguous ticket sales of recent weeks. But compared to National Day holidays of the recent past, the weekend bump was pretty paltry. The frame’s overall sales total of just $88 million was down 67 percent compared to China’s 2021 holiday total of $271 million, and down 65 percent from 2020.
The sales plummet shows just how deeply China’s movie market is ailing due to Beijing’s dynamic Covid zero policies and an increasingly thin slate of appealing commercial movies. Year to date, China’s movie ticket revenue total sits at $3.70 billion, a slide of 27 percent compared to the $5.09 billion total at the same point in 2021.