Maleficent, Godzilla rule China box office

Legendary Pictures/Warner Bros’ Godzilla held onto the top spot at the box office in the week June 16-22, taking $31.77m for a cumulative gross of $69.07m. Maleficent took second position with its opening weekend gross and was followed by Warner Bros’ Edge Of Tomorrow, which took $11.29m for a cume of $61.95m.

In fourth position, Fox’s X-Men: Days Of Future Past grossed $2.09m for a cume of $116.49m, inching close to Captain America: The Winter Soldier’s $116.63m final tally and record as highest-grossing Hollywood release so far in 2014.

Hollywood continues to roll out its big guns this weekend with the release of Transformers: Age Of Extinction, which is expected to set records in China, following heavy promotion stemming from the Chinese co-producers, marketing partners and stars connected to the film. Some pundits are predicting it may even break Avatar’s record as the top-grossing film of all time in China with $222m. The third Transformers film, Transformers: Dark Of The Moon, grossed $173.6m in 2011.

However, Transformers 4 will not open completely unchallenged as local romantic comedy The Break-up Guru is also being released on June 27. The Enlight Pictures production marks the directing debut of actor Deng Chao, who also stars along with Mini Yang.

Godzilla director Gareth Edwards, Maleficent star Angelina Jolie, Grace Of Monaco star Nicole Kidman and the cast and crew of Transformers 4, including Michael Bay and Mark Wahlberg, have all recently been in China to promote their respective films. However, Jolie’s comments about the political sovereignty of Taiwan raised the ire of some local netizens.

Rounding out last week’s top ten were local films Midnight Hair (weekly gross $1.04m, cume $1.89m); Night Of Adventure ($0.61m, $4.24m) and opener Night Mail ($0.52m), followed by German actor-director Til Schweiger’s Guardians ($0.46m, $0.94m).