China Box Office: ‘The Amazing Spider-Man 2’ Dominates With $56 Million

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 has captured the world’s second largest film market in its web, taking $46.45 million in its first full week in China for a local cumulative total of $56.38 million from 245,422 screenings and 7.4 million admissions.

Spider-Man’s profile was high in the country after Andrew Garfield, Jamie Foxx and Emma Stone visited Beijing to promote the movie last month, but its screening slot had been expected to work against it, as it was debuted after an unofficial blackout period on screening imported movies, used by Chinese regulators to give local films a better chance of success.

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It also came out after a local holiday period, when schools were already back in session and people had returned to work.

But Spidey knocked homegrown Chinese romantic comedy My Old Classmate into second place nonetheless.

Overseas sales have been kind to the Sony sequel. By last weekend the foreign total was $403 million, and the global haul was $550.9 million.

Directed by Frant Guo, top local contender My Old Classmate stars Zhou Dongyu and Lin Gengxin as university classmates who fall in love but then drift apart.

During the week it took $11.71 million for a total of $64.36 million, and it had 130,633 screenings and 2.19 million admissions in the week to May 11, according to data from research group Entgroup.

In third place was The Great Hypnotist, which took $10.63 million for a cume of $33.07 million.

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The Great Hypnotist is a mystery thriller representing a new direction in genre films for China and marks the second commercial success in the mainland for its Taiwan-born director Leste Chen, who previously scored with his 2013 romantic comedy Say Yes. The movie stars Xu Zheng (Lost in Thailand) and Hong Kong star Karen Mok.

Behind that was the Jason Statham-starrer Hummingbird, which took $2.45 million in its opening three days, while Pang Ho-cheung‘s Hong Kong International Film Festival opener Aberdeen was the fifth most popular movie, taking $1.55 million in its opening four days.

Carlos Saldanha‘s Rio 2 remained in sixth, taking another $950,000 for a total of $38.95 million after 31 days, followed by Law Wing-Cheong‘s, Ice Man 3D, which took $700,000 for a cume of $22.8 million.

U.S.-Korean animated feature The Outback, directed by Kyung Ho Lee, took $680,000 for a total of $3.56 million after 11 days, while the thriller Enchanted Doll was in ninth place, taking $470,000 in its first five days.

Rounding out the top ten list was the French comedy The Volcano, which took $320,000 in its opening three days.

Twitter: @cliffordcoonan