Chinese Box Office Figures for 2012 Released

A steamy moment from Painted Skin 2: The Resurrection, the second highest grossing domestically-made film in China in 2012.

SARFT has published the box domestic and overseas box office performers for 2012, and CMM-I have re-published the results in English here and here - or you can see the top ten results below.

As noted in a Newsbites post earlier this week, the low-budget comedy Lost in Thailand was the shock winner in the domestic box office stakes last year, pulling in a cool RMB 1 billion by the end of the year. The film is still in cinemas, so that figure has no doubt grown considerably in the first weeks of 2013.

Painted Skin: The Resurrection, the sequel to the first Painted Skin film from 2008, came in second on the list of locally made high earners.

Chinese audiences demonstrated their ongoing love affair with Titanic by putting the 3D re-release at the top of foreign film box office earners for 2012 - despite any glimpse of Kate Winslet's breasts being censored in Chinese prints by those sensitive souls at SARFT.The latest Mission Impossible film came in second, and surprisingly Ang Lee's Life of Pi came in third. The rest of the foreign film top earners were a predictable list of the year’s Hollywood blockbusters.

The figures show that despite Chinese governmental efforts to foster a local commercial industry to rival Hollywood, the biggest foreign films still tend to earn a lot more than their local counterparts. On the other hand, the box office takings for Chinese films are certainly nothing to sniff at, and would be the envy of most other nations.


2012 Top 10 Domestic Films by Box Office

Name                                                                Box office
Lost in Thailand (Renzai Jiongtu Zhitai Jiong)      RMB 1 billion (US$ 161.54 million)
As of Jan.6:                                                      RMB 1.16 billion (US$ 188.09 million)

Painted Skin：The Resurrection (Huapi Er)         RMB 704.51 million (US$ 113.35 million)

CZ12 (Shier Shengxiao)                                     RMB 535.33 million (US$ 86.13 million)
As of Jan.6: RMB 735.97 million (US$ 118.41 million)

Back to 1942 (Yijiu Sier)                                    RMB 372 million (US$ 59.85 million)

Cold War (Hanzhan)                                          RMB 253.61 million (US$ 40.80 million)

The Silent War (Tingfeng Zhe)                            RMB 233.74 million (US$ 37.60 million)
  
The Four (Sida Mingbu)                                      RMB 192.17 million (US$ 30.92 million)

The Great Magician (Damo Shushi)                     RMB 174.12 million (US$ 28.01 million)

Caught in the Web (Sou Suo)                              RMB 173.54 million (US$ 27.92 million)

Mission Incredible: Adventures On The Dragon's Trail (Xiyang Yanghui Tailang Zhikai Xinchuang Longnian)                                                         RMB 165.95 million (US$ 26.7 million)

Source: SARFT, reprinted by CMM-I.




2012 Top 10 Imported Films by Box Office
Name                                                                Box office
Titanic                                                              RMB 947.58 million (US$ 152.46 million)

Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol                  RMB 674.71 million (US$ 108.56 million)

Life of Pi                                                           RMB 571.05 million (US$ 91.88 million)

The Avengers                                                    RMB 567.92 million (US$ 91.37 million)

Men in Black III                                                RMB 504.15 million (US$ 81.11 million)

Ice Age: Continental Drift                                   RMB 449.13 million (US$ 72.26 million)

Journey 2: The Mysterious Island                        RMB 388.49 million (US$ 62.5 million)

The Dark Knight Rises                                       RMB 340.12 million (US$ 54.72 million)

The Expendables 2                                             RMB 334.06 million (US$ 53.75 million)

The Amazing Spider-Man                                   RMB 311.51 million (US$ 50.12 million)

Source: SARFT, reprinted by CMM-I.