China Box Office: 'No More Bets' and 'Meg 2' share meaty weekend total

Meg 2: The Trench,” the second instalment in the Chinese-financed giant shark franchise, was the top film worldwide over the weekend. But in its China home market “Meg 2” was beaten by strong previews of “No More Bets.”To get more news about china movie, you can visit shine news official website.

Nevertheless, China enjoyed its third-highest box office weekend of the year with $185 million, thanks to the arrival of two popular films at the top of the charts. That score is the strongest weekend of 2023 outside the Chinese New Year holiday season.

It also meant that China's weekend grossed more than North America's (estimated to be $176m, according to Comscore). That is not unprecedented, but it is rare for a non-holiday weekend.
Meg 2” opened on Friday and earned $53.7 million (RMB381 million) over three days, according to data from consultancy Artisan Gateway.

"No More Bets" has an official release date of Wednesday, but it had wide advance screenings from Saturday. Those previews put the film in first place on both Saturday and Sunday. For the Friday-Sunday weekend, it just edged out "Meg 2" with a total of $55 million (RMB390 million).

"Meg 2" appeared to be popular with the popcorn crowd, but did poorly with moviegoers. Audience ratings on the movie-ticketing platforms Taopiaopiao and Maoyan averaged 9.4 and 9.1 out of 10, respectively. On the more sophisticated Douban, the rating was a low 5.8.

Local data services show that "Meg 2" had 149,000 admissions on Friday. And it held strong on Saturday with 138,000 sessions. But exhibitors cut it down to 105,000 on Sunday to make room for the expansion of "No More Bets". Still, Maoyan's forecast for "Meg 2's" eventual box office total in China is now a hefty RMB1 billion, or $140 million.

"No More Bets" is a crime action drama about a Chinese couple, a computer programmer and a model, who go overseas and get involved in a scam. From the trailer, it seems to have a high violence quotient - with gang beatings and interrogation torture - as well as gambling and get-rich-quick themes. The film is produced by Ning Hao and his studio Dirty Monkey. As a director, Ning has a strong track record with comedy action films such as "Crazy Racer", "Breakup Buddies" and "Crazy Alien".

"No More Bets" does not appear in Comscore's calculation of worldwide weekend grosses. But its $55 million haul would appear to make it the fourth highest-grossing film worldwide between Friday and Sunday - behind "Meg 2" ($142 million), "Barbie" ($127 million) and "Oppenheimer" ($82 million).
In third place in China over the weekend was "Creation of the Gods 1: Kingdom of Storms". It took in $38.3 million, according to Artisan Gateway, for a cumulative total of $234 million after three weekends in release.

Imax reports that "Meg 2" earned $4.2 million of its China total on its screens and "Creation of the Gods I" earned $1.7 million (for an Imax China total of $25 million).

"One and Only", the highest opening of the previous weekend, slipped to fourth place. It earned $19.3 million over the weekend for a 10-day cume of $101 million.