China box office: ‘Barbie’ opens in fifth place on Friday as ‘Oppenheimer’ awaits release date

Barbenheimer’s box office dominance doesn’t extend to China, it seems.

by Greta Gerwig Barbie released in China on Friday to considerable fanfare, but its pink appeal is proving no match for a slew of local Chinese hits. The Warner Bros. fantasy comedy is on track to finish its opening day in China in fifth place, having earned just $670,000 (RMB 4.8 million) as of 12pm local time.

by Christopher Nolan Oppenheimer, meanwhile, has been approved by Chinese censors for release, but regulators have yet to give it a release date. Any China launch for the Universal Pictures historical thriller is now probably at least a month away.

The soft start for Barbie it continues a trend of Hollywood films making far less in China than they once did. by Tom Cruise Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, first part badly missed its opening weekend in the country last weekend, debuting in third place behind a pair of Chinese hits.

Hollywood films have once again flocked to Chinese theaters at a healthy pace, but total ticket sales for US films in the first half of 2023 stood at just $592 million, a 69% drop from 1, $9 billion earned during the same period in 2019, before the pandemic. Local Chinese movies are doing better than ever. In the first half of the year, ticket revenue for Chinese stocks soared to $2.8 billion, up 27% from the same period in 2019.

AS Barbie was reeling on Friday, the Chinese tentacles were doing big business again. Action comedy Wonder familyfrom hit comedy producer FunAge Pictures, was doing booming with $4.6 million in sales for the day by 12 p.m. The first installment of Chinese director Wuershan’s historical fantasy Fengshen trilogydubbed “China’s answer to Lord of the Rings”, was on course for second place with about $ 2.4 million. Fengshen opened Thursday to $7.5 million and strong word-of-mouth. Suspended animated hit Chang An was third Friday with $2.1 million (film has earned $128 million to date), followed by MMA drama Never say never with about $1 million for the first half of the day (his total is $239 million).

Updates coming soon.