"Detective Chinatown 3" led China's box office on Spring Festival, or the Chinese Lunar New Year that falls on Feb. 12 this year, raking in more than 1 billion yuan (155 million U.S. dollars).
The latest installment in Wanda Pictures' well-received "Detective Chinatown" comedy film franchise, joining six other domestic titles for releasing on Friday, accounted for about 60 percent of the market's total earnings for the day, according to data from the China Movie Data Information Network.
The other six films opening on the same day are time travel comedy "Hi, Mom," fantasy thriller "A Writer's Odyssey," mobile game turned fantasy film "The Yinyang Master," comedy-drama "Endgame," animated fantasy "New Gods: Nezha Reborn," and "Boonie Bears: The Wild Life," which is the latest installment in the domestic animated comedy franchise.
A sequel to the 2018 comedy hit "Detective Chinatown 2," which generated nearly 3.4 billion yuan at China's box office, "Detective Chinatown 3" was originally set to be released during the same holiday a year ago but was postponed due to COVID-19.
Coming in second on Friday's daily box office chart was "Hi, Mom," which grossed about 288 million yuan and contributed 17 percent to the total takings.
Fantasy thriller "A Writer's Odyssey" ranked third, generating a revenue of about 136 million yuan, or 8 percent of the market's daily total.
It was followed by "The Yinyang Master" and "Boonie Bears: The Wild Life," which pocketed 80 million yuan and 72 million yuan respectively.
The weeklong Spring Festival holiday, usually a busy moviegoing period in China, started on Feb. 11.
As the first such moviegoing period following the COVID-19 outbreak, the holiday is of great importance to China's film industry and will be seen as a further mark of recovery in the box office market, one of the world's largest.
