The Golden Rock Box Office Report - 10/8/07

- There was no Friday update of the hong Kong box office, so I couldn't predict what happened yesterday. On Sunday box office in Hong Kong, Lust, Caution continued to perform extremely well, earning HK$1.9 million from 61 screens. After 12 days, Ang Lee's erotic thriller has already made an amazing HK$22.76 million. According to the Hong Kong Film Blog, it'll beat Basic Instinct as the highest-grossing category-III film in history (no one under 18 may be admitted) once it grosses an additional HK$5 million, which will probably happen by the weekend.

From the same distributor in Hong Kong is last week's only opening film Resident Evil. On 36 screens, the second sequel from the sci-fi horror series made HK$1.4 million for a 4-day total of HK$5.27 million. Continuing with a bit of legs is Oxide Pang's The Detective, which is hanging on with another HK$310,000 on 28 screens. After 11 days, the mystery thriller has made HK$4.53 million. The Hong Kong loser from last week's mid-autumn festival Beauty and the 7 Beasts limped through Sunday with just HK$100,000 from 14 screens for just HK$2.37 million after 12 days. Quite frankly, I'm even surprised that this got past HK$2 million.

- In North America, Lust, Caution expanded by 16 screens to the other major cities, and it made $369,000 at 26th place for a per-screen average of $21,705. However, I don't expect it to have any commercial success later on due to the NC-17 rating and the not-so-positive reviews from Western critics.

- In Korean box office, Hur Jin-Ho's Happiness (which looks kind of blah to me, and I'm a fan. Then again, I don't understand a word of Korean) led the charts with 583,000 admissions, while Rush Hour 3 flopped with a 2nd place opening with just 354,000 admissions. This week, 5 of the 10 films on the top 10 were Korean, though most of the Hollywood films were just holdovers.