‘Dungeons & Dragons’ Opens in Fourth Place as ‘Suzume’ Reigns

“Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves” opened in fourth place at the mainland China box office with a muted $5 million haul. Top honors belonged to Japanese animation film “Suzume” for the second weekend.

“Suzume” incurred a 55% week-on-week drop, falling from $49.6 million in its opening weekend, to $22.1 million in is second, according to data from consultancy Artisan Gateway. After ten days in Chinese theaters, “Suzume” now has a cumulative total of $80.6 million.

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Nevertheless, its lead at the top of the box office chart was unassailable. The weekend’s best-placed new release title was “Hachiko,” a Chinese retelling of the Japanese tale of a dog which faithfully waited at a station for its master years after his death. (The story was previously given a U.S. version with Richard Gere in the lead human role.) It earned $8.9 million (RMB61.2 million) in its opening weekend.

Produced by streaming service iQiyi, the Chinese film stars Feng Xiaogang, one of China’s leading film directors. Feng has had a variety of acting roles from the minor to the award-winning (“Mr. Six”). It was directed by Xu Ang and produced by Yeh Jufeng in 2021. It was previously intended to be released at Chinese New Year in 2022, but was held up by the COVID pandemic.

“Post-Truth” a local social-comedy drama film that had claimed the top spot in the box office charts in its first two weeks. Its fourth weekend saw it earn $6.4 million (RMB44.2 million) for a cumulative of $85.5 million (RMB590 million) since release on March 10.

“Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves” placed fourth with a full three-day weekend. It may have ranked fifth if Chinese romance “Nobody, But You” had opened on Friday. It opened on Saturday and earned $4.5 million (RMB30.8 million) in two days.

Imax reports that “Suzume” earned $1.6 million on its screens over the weekend, taking its China-Imax total to $13 million, the second highest score of all time for a Japanese-language film on Imax. “Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves” earned $513,000 on Imax screens in China.

There will be greater competition for the more-than-700 Imax screens in China over the coming week. “Super Mario Bros.” will claim some. So too, will a re-release of “Titanic” from Monday.

The latest weekend box office in China was worth $56.4 million in total, down a quarter from the previous weekend. The running total for the year so far is $2.34 billion, which Artisan Gateway calculates as a 15% gain on 2022.

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Originally published April 2, 2023, 10:53 PM