‘Ride On’ Continues to Dominate China Box Office, While ‘Mario Bros’ Falters in Leveling Up

Aging action legend Jackie Chan galloped away with another win in his latest action comedy film Drive on maintained its hold on the top spot of the Chinese box office for the second consecutive weekend. Meanwhile, Universal Pictures’ The Super Mario Bros. movie struggled to keep up and finished the frame in fourth place.

According to data from consulting firm Artisan Gateway, Drive on earned $6 million (RMB 41.5 million) for the weekend, a respectable 48 percent drop on a weekly basis from its $11.7 million opening the previous week. The film has already garnered $22.6 million in ticket sales since its release on April 7. Ticketing app Maoyan predicts a career total of $33 million (RMB 230 million) for the title.

In second place came iQiyi Pictures’ Hachikowhich added $4.9 million over the weekend, bringing its total to $35.1 million since its March 31 release. The movie, which is based on the classic Japanese story of a loyal dog who waits for his owner at the train station every day, has been a respectable minor hit with Chinese audiences.

The Super Mario Bros. movie meanwhile, continued to impress, collecting $4.3 million in its second weekend in China, bringing its ten-day total to $17.1 million—a small fraction of the film’s $347.8 million domestic gross. Such large differences between domestic and Chinese sales totals were once rare for IP-controlled studio tent poles.

The new release of the week was a period action feature Faces in the crowdopened in fifth place with $3 million.

China’s 2023 box office total currently stands at $2.5 billion, up 20 percent from the same period last year when the market was hit by harsh Covid-19 lockdowns and movie theater closures. Compared to the pre-pandemic benchmark year of 2019, this year’s start is down 17 percent.

However, analysts expect a burst of box office energy on Friday with the release of the Japanese anime hit The first slam dunkwhich is jointly distributed by China Film Group and Road Pictures, the marketer and distributor behind it Suzume‘s recent local success.