The film's mainland China distributor, China Film Group, said it had surpassed the RMB300m benchmark on Monday with a haul of $44.08m (RMB302.4m). The figure broke the RMB290m record set by Zhang Yimou's Curse Of The Golden Flower at the beginning of 2007.
In US dollar terms, Red Cliff has become the highest-grossing of all films in China, surpassing Titanic which took RMB320m or $39m at the exchange rate of the time of its releasein 1998. However, at today's exchange rate, Titanic out-grossed Red Cliff with $47m.
Red Cliff has also set records for mainland China's highest opening day gross, with $3.64m (RMB25m), and the highest first-weekend gross, with $15.74m (RMB100m).
Still on release, the film opened in July in mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia. The total pan-Asia gross is over $67m. Mainland China box office takings accounted for about 66% of the total gross.
In Hong Kong, the film had grossed around $3m (HK$24m) as of Aug 6, while in Taiwan it had grossed around $5m (NT$156m) up to Aug 10. In Thailand, the film made around $1m (34m baht), according to distributor Sahamongkol.
In Korea, distributor Showbox reports that the film had racked up 1.6 million admissions up to last weekend, for a gross of around $11.2m.
The second episode of Red Cliff is scheduled for release in mid-January 2009, around Chinese New Year.
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