Transcendence fails to dislodge Captain America in China

Released exclusively in 3D in China, Transcendence was produced by Alcon Entertainment and China’s DMG Entertainment, which brought Depp to Beijing at the end of March to promote the film. Although it failed to dislodge Disney/Marvel’s Captain America from the top spot, Transcendence came in second over the weekend and its China takings are around the same as its estimated gross in North America.

Captain America kept pole position for the third week running with a further haul of $18.02m for a cumulative gross of $98.27m. Fox animation Rio 2 took a further $12.05m in its second week and has so far grossed $25.01m in China.

Hong Kong director Dante Lam’s That Demon Within also opened last weekend and came in fourth with $7.94m. Fifth place went to Millennium Films’ The Legend Of Hercules, directed by Renny Harlin, which took $1.55m in its second week for a cumulative gross of $3.92m.

The bottom half of the top ten was taken up by Chinese movies: Hong Kong romantic comedy Delete Lover came in sixth with $1.55m and a cume of $3.53m; The Truth About Beauty, a romantic comedy directed by Hong Kong’s Aubrey Lam, came in seventh with $1.3m ($13.17m); mystery/comedy Best Suspects opened in eighth position with $780,000 over three days; Taiwanese comedy Campus Confidential also opened and took $750,000 in six days, while local horror Death Is Here 3 rounded out the top ten with $710,000 ($5.24m).

* The China Film Bureau recently announced that total box office revenue in the first quarter of 2014 reached $1.1bn (RMB6.79bn), an increase of 29% on the first three months of 2013. Local films accounted for a market share of 62.5%, with Chinese New Year hit The Monkey King leading the first quarter top ten with $168m (RMB1.04bn). Foreign films took 37.5% of the total box office, with The Hobbit: The Desolation Of Smaug as the top-grossing import with $74.6m (RMB463m).