Warrior of the Rainbow wages war on Taiwanese box office

Taiwanese filmmaker Wei Te-sheng’s (Cape No.7) war epic Warrior of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale has cinemas in Taiwan during its opening week, setting a new opening weekend gross for Taiwanese films. The film was released in Taiwan on Sept 9 and took in $4.7m (NT$131.6m) in three and half days. 

The figure ties with the opening weekend gross of Avatar which was set in 2009, and is slightly lower than the opening weekend gross of Transformers: Dark of the Moon in July which is around $5.5m (NT$156m).

However, both Avatar and Transformers: Dark of the Moon opened in 3D screens with higher ticket prices.  Warrior of the Rainbow is now seen as setting the highest opening record among all 2D films in Taiwanese film history.

Starring Da-Ching, Umin Boya, Landy Wen, Lo Mei-ling, Japanese star Ando Masanobu and Taiwanese star Vivian Hsu, the film is set in the 1930s in central Taiwan, about the Wushe Incident in which Seediq tribe warrior Mouna Rudo led his people to rebel against the Japanese occupation. 

The Venice competition film is produced by Wei’s ARS Film Production and Taiwanese studio Central Motion Picture Corporation (CMPC) with John Woo, Terence Chang and Jimmy Huang producing. Fortissimo Films is handling international sales. StudioCanal has taken UK rights and ARP taking French rights.  Lighten Distribution in Hong Kong will release the film in two films in mid October and November.

According to CMPC, the film release scale is also the largest in the Taiwan film history with 376 film prints in 67 cinemas and around 300 screens.  The scale is larger than the release of Avatar and Transformers: Dark of the Moon in Taiwan.