Box Office: ‘Kung Fu Panda 3’ Kicks Up Awesome $6.5M In China Preview
In the “Hmm, this is interesting even if I don’t know what it means for the long term” category, DreamWorks Animation DWA +3.85% and Oriental DreamWorks debuted Kung Fu Panda 3 in China on Saturday afternoon for a special three-hour sneak preview session. And the all-important animated sequel earned a pretty terrific $6.5 million. That makes up $6.5m for basically two showtimes at various theaters nationwide (the film is around 89 minutes with credits) and offers something of a taste for the film’s presumably blockbuster debut in America and especially China next weekend.
Now China had some pretty lousy weather as well, so it can be argued that the figure would have been even higher had yesterday been a little nicer outside. The film, which of course is the follow-up to 2011′s Kung Fu Panda 2, is debuting in America and China (among other markets) on the weekend before the weekend of the Chinese New Year. And as I always say, the weekend before a holiday is the best one to open with since the holiday blunts the impact of a would-be second-weekend drop.
The film is a Chinese co-production alongside state-run China Film Group and cost, depending on who you asked, between $120 million and $140 million to produce. The film was initially going to be released on December 23rd of last year but jumped ship once Walt Disney’s DIS +2.08% Star Wars: The Force Awakens moved from May of 2015 to December 18th. It initially planted itself on March 18th, one weekend before Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, but eventually went bold and plopped itself in January to basically become the biggest movie ever to open in January (in America at least).
You might make the case that this was the first “American” franchise blockbuster that picked its domestic release date due to reasons related to the Chinese calendar, but honestly I’m more interested to see how such a big sequel of this nature performs in what is customarily a dump month. Kung Fu Panda opened in 2008 with a whopping $60 million opening weekend before earning $217m in America and $603m worldwide, including a then-stunning $12m in China. Kung Fu Panda 2 dipped in a bit in America ($48m opening, $165m domestic total), but made up for it overseas with a $665m worldwide cume, including a then-eye popping $92m in China.
This may be a case where the Chinese performance of ”worldwide” blockbuster is almost expected to outgross the American performance. To that goal, DreamWorks has actually crafted two version of the film for China, one that is the “regular” version with local movie stars and voice over artists dubbing accordingly and a second version animated somewhat differently to more accurately reflect the mouth movement and/or body language.
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