Movies With Butter

In last week's report, I was expecting "Ip Man: Final Fight" to do well enough to at least place second at last week's box office (3/18-3/24), but that didn't happen. It debuted at fifth place with just $1.17M, not even good enough to beat the three-week-old martial arts comedy "Princess and Seven Kung Fu Masters."

I was also wrong about "A Good Day to Die Hard" repeating at number one. Taking that spot is "Finding Mr. Right," a romantic-comedy starring Tang Wei ("Lust, Caution," "Dragon") and Wu Xiubo that opened with a surprisingly good $12.1M.

"Die Hard 5" was a close second with $11.8M. It's total after two weeks is a solid $27.9M, pushing its worldwide gross to a good, but slightly disappointing $289M. "Live Free and Die Hard," the previous installment, did almost $100M more at $384M. But with a relatively modest budget of $92M, "Die Hard 5" will still turn a profit for Fox. I'm not sure if they'll still go ahead with "Die Hard 6" because "Die Hard 5"'s domestic gross of $66M is only half that of its predecessor's. My guess is they won't.

In third with $11.3M is another actioner, "Resident Evil: Retribution," pushing its eight day total to $15M. Worldwide, the fifth film in the action-horror franchise has accumulated an outstanding $237M, which is why another "Resident Evil" movie is on the way.

As mentioned previously, the fourth and fifth place finishers are a pair of martial arts films: "Princess and Seven Kung Fu Masters" and "Ip Man: Final Fight." They kicked up $1.4M and $1.2M, respectively. The total for "Princess" is a decent $10.7M.

Rounding out the rest of the top ten are "Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons" ($0.9M, $197M total), "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" ($0.9M, $49.7M total), "Upside Down" ($0.6M, $11.6M total), "Les Miserables" ($0.6M, $9.9M total), and "An End to Killing" ($0.5M).

I wasn't expecting "Finding Mr. Right" to do so well. Apparently, Tang Wei can draw an audience, and an Anthony Wong version of Ip Man can not. I guess there is a limit to the number of Ip Man movies people will pay to watch. "Lost in Thailand"'s record as the hightest grossing Chinese film is looking pretty safe now because it doesn't look like "Journey to the West" will be able to reach its record $201M haul.

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