$GMEC ~ Wall Street Journal Confirms Box Office Movie is

$GMEC ~ Wall Street Journal Confirms Box Office Movie is breaking records and looks to be the biggest Movie Hit ever. Wall Street Journal write up and coverage of $GMEC ~ Great China Mania Top Artist Chrissie Chau"s "Journey to the West" Box Office movie.

http://blogs.wsj.com/scene/2013/02/20/journey...ox-office/

As of Tuesday, "Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons" pulled in 762.3 million yuan ($122.1 million) since opening on Feb. 10, according to media-research firm EntGroup Inc. It still has a long way to go before reaching the 1.26 billion yuan earned by "Lost in Thailand," but the Hollywood Reporter predicted this week that "Journey to the West" would soon march past "Lost in Thailand" to become China’s highest-earning domestically produced movie.

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"Journey to the West" Conquers Chinese Box Office
"Journey to the West" is the creation of director-writer Stephen Chow, best known for "Shaolin Soccer," "Kung Fu Hustle" and dozens of other hits. (Mr. Chow, a popular comedic actor, doesn’t appear in "Journey to the West.") The 3-D movie, based on the classic Ming Dynasty-era novel "Journey to the West," follows the adventures of a young demon-catcher. Audiences have responded enthusiastically to Mr. Chow’s potent mix of action, comedy, terror, romance, and a trio of popular stars: Shu Qi, Wen Zhang and Huang Bo.

The movie has already set some records. Its opening-day take was 81.7 million yuan, breaking the 70-million-yuan record of "Painted Skin: The Resurrection" for a domestic movie. The Hollywood blockbuster "Transformers: Dark of the Moon" remains the opening-day champ with 102 million yuan. But last week "Journey to the West" claimed the title of largest single-day gross (on Feb. 14) of 123 million yuan for all films — domestic and foreign — surpassing the previous one-day record of 114 million yuan set in 2011 for the third installment of the "Transformers" franchise.

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A scene from the movie
All the clamoring for box-office supremacy begs the question: Is China entering a new era where records are broken every few months? Consider this: The top-four highest-grossing domestically produced movies have all been released just within the past eight months.

On Tuesday, "Journey to the West" surpassed the fantasy-action movie "Painted Skin: The Resurrection," which was released last June and went on to earn 726.5 million yuan, to become the third-highest grossing domestic film in China. It was only a few months ago that "Painted Skin: The Resurrection" was the top-grossing Chinese production. It has now slipped to fourth, overtaken by "Journey to the West" and the December releases of "Lost in Thailand" — the only Chinese movie to earn more than a billion yuan at the domestic box office – and Jackie Chan’s "CZ12," an action-comedy that he directed, wrote and stars in; it earned 879 million yuan, according to EntGroup. ("Avatar" still holds the record for the top-grossing movie ever in China at roughly 1.4 billion yuan, but that title looks increasingly vulnerable.)