China Box Office: ‘Ant-Man and the Wasp’ Dominates Weekend With $68 Million

By Patrick Frater

LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – “Ant-Man and the Wasp” showed no signs of suffering from a China release that came a month after its outing in other territories. It dominated the weekend with a very bright $66.5 million score.

Including sneak previews and midnight screenings, it topped $68 million. Nationwide, it played on a very wide 148,000 screenings per day. Fully $7.2 million of the total came from the country’s 500-plus IMAX screens.

The film opened well with $22.5 million on Friday and maintained almost identical performances on Saturday and Sunday. Other titles had no such resilience.

Martial arts story, “Big Brother,” starring Donnie Yen opened with $5.08 on Friday, but saw its numbers eroded. It finished second with $13.2 million.

Holdovers, “The Island” and “The Meg” clocked up almost identical scores of $7.2 million and $7.17 million, for third and fourth places respectively. After 17 days, Chinese comedy “The Island” has a cumulative of $188 million, while -U.S.-co-production “” has managed $144 million, also after 17 days of release.

China’s “Go Brother” earned $6.87 million in its three day opening. “Hotel Transylvania 2” took $2.98 million for a cumulative of $26.2 million after 10 days on release.

The cumulative score for the top 10 films was $112 million for the weekend. That is the weakest weekend total in a surprisingly strong August.