China Box Office: 'Captain America: The Winter Soldier' Opens Huge

The national Qingming holiday period boosted the movie to a muscular $39.2 million opening in the world's second largest film market.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier took a powerful $39.23 million in its opening three days in China, accounting for 40 percent of all screenings in the world’s second biggest film market during the Qingming "tomb-sweeping" holiday.

Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson and Samuel L. Jackson came to Beijing to promote the movie last month, and their visit seems to have paid off.

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Captain America: The Winter Soldier, directed by brothers Anthony and Joe Russo, showed only in 3D in China and notched up 5.6 million admissions at 102,638 screenings here, nearly 40 percent of all showings in the country over the weekend, according to data from the Beijing-based research firm Entgroup. (Marvel Disney reports that the film opened to $39.2 million, while Entgroup has the figure at $36.23 million.)

This puts it ahead of the nearly $35 million that Thor: The Dark World made in its first four days back in November 2013, while Iron Man 3 took $64.5 million in its first five days.

The Qingming festival is a time when people honor their ancestors. Schools and offices are closed, and many also take the opportunity to go to the movies.

The movie is already making history globally. Captain America 2 bowed to a record-breaking $96.2 million in North America, for an early worldwide total of $303.3 million.

With Evans back in the title role, as well as Avengers stars Johansson and Jackson, Captain America 2 picks up two years after Avengers left off. Captain America and Black Widow (Johansson) discover there is a secret conspiracy within S.H.I.E.L.D. and fight to stop it along with the Falcon, played by Anthony Mackie.

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In second place at the Chinese box was Dreamworks’ Mr. Peabody & Sherman, which took another $7.63 million to bring its cume after 10 days to $15.51 million.

The best-performing local movie was the plastic surgery comedy The Truth About Beauty (Zheng Rong Ri Ji), directed by Aubrey Lam and produced by Peter Chan’s We Pictures. It grossed $5.86 million its opening weekend.

DreamWorks’ Need for Speed, starring Aaron Paul, slipped to fourth place but still put in a respectable performance, adding another $5.76 million to its haul and bringing its cumulative total in China to $65.08 million.

George Clooney’s The Monuments Men came in fifth, holding its own with a solid $2.38 million over the holiday period. The movie has now taken $7.35 million in China after 10 days.

In sixth place was Diao Yinan’s Berlin Golden Bear-winning Black Coal, Thin Ice, which grossed another $2.26 million to bring its cumulative total to $15.6 million after 17 days, a strong performance for a movie that blends arthouse sensibilities with genre noir.

Just behind this was the local horror movie Death Is Here 3, which took $2.11 million in its opening three days, while On the Way, a Chinese-South Korean romantic comedy which pairs Chinese actress Huang Shengyi with South Korea’s Ji Jin-hee, took another $1.35 million to bring its cume to $3.22 million.

In ninth place was Horse Trader, which grossed another $1.12 million to bring its cume to $9.94 million. Rounding out the top 10 was the domestic movie Fighting, which took another $980,000 for a total of $11.67 million.