2013 Q1 box office

Local box office took in $43.4m through the period ending March 28 with A Good Day to Die Hard taking top honors with 3.68m. That was down 2% from last year when the first 3 months collected $44.2m and Journey 2: The Mysterious Island roped in 4.5m. The first 3 months of 2013 can be summed up by 1 weekend: Chinese New Year. 4/5 top 5 films have come from CNY weekend alone including the top 2, which are the only films to have made more than 3m.

2013 Q1 (from Jan. 1-Mar. 31)
Rank	Movie	Total	Release Date
1	A Good Day to Die Hard	$3,688,633	February 7
2	Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons	$3,637,950	February 7
3	The Grandmaster	$2,741,677	January 10
4	Hotel Deluxe	$2,508,805	February 7
5	I Love Hong Kong 2013	$2,178,179	February 7
6	Oz The Great and Powerful	$2,144,514	March 7
7	Warm Bodies	$1,848,070	February 14
8	The Impossible	$1,754,649	January 10
9	Jack the Giant Slayer	$1,562,515	February 28
10	G.I. Joe: Retaliation	$1,537,359	March 28
11	Cloud Atlas	$1,376,787	January 24
12	The Croods	$1,202,108	March 28
13	Silver Linings Playbook	$1,046,299	February 28
14	Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters	$1,002,844	January 24
15	Hotel Transylvania	$948,825	February 7
16	Olympus Has Fallen	$931,234	March 21
17	Lincoln	$775,958	February 21
18	The Last Tycoon	$748,614	January 3
19	Django Unchained	$667,689	January 17
20	The Tower	$610,358	January 24

Top 20 ending through Mar. 31   A Good Day to Die Hard staved off tough competition from Stephen Chow's Journey to the West which had to settle for 2nd by just $50,000. Die Hard 5 improved on Live Free or Die Hard by 54% and is the new franchise leader. For the 2nd year in a row, the #1 film of the 1st quarter happened to be a film released early in HK on Chinese New Year weekend.

Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons, a massive hit in China, is the runner-up through the first quarter. While 3.6m can be considered a good gross by any film's standards, it clearly could not reach the Stephen Chow heights of the early 2000's where his films scored $6-8m. It's safe to say that the lovefest for Stephen Chow is over.

Wong Kar Wai's The Grandmaster took charge on the 2nd weekend of the new year, becoming the first film to gross over 1m on opening weekend. The Grandmaster become Wong Kar Wai's biggest film in 8 days, superseding his debut film As Tears Go By.

The pair of Chinese New Year comedies took 4th and 5th place but they reversed positions from last year with Raymond Wong beating Eric Tsang's comedy for the first time in 4 years. Hotel Deluxe perked up 61% from the 2012 installment of the defunct Alls Well Ends Well series while I Love Hong Kong 2013 was off 12% from last year's offering.

The bottom 4 of the top 5 were Chinese films and they accounted for 1/4 of the top 20 in the first three months.


Surprises

3. Warm Bodies - This romantic-horror zombie comedy crawled to its Valentine's Day opening with early previews on the tail end of the Chinese New Year holiday. Its opening weekend bested Twilight's by over $200,000. It fell backwards into #1 on its 2nd weekend by leapfrogging over the other holdovers and dropped 50% despite the Valentine's Day holiday and early previews inflating its opening weekend. It held up on its 3rd weekend with a 41% decline to 1.6m. It declined heavier in the following weeks with bigger competition opening and taking its remaining screens. It left theaters last weekend, its 7th, with almost 1.85m in the books. Its word of mouth was astonishing as it produced a eye-popping 95% approval rating from users, making it one of the most well-received movies in the past few years. Overseas, HK stood as one of its best territories as it nearly matched Germany's and Italy's grosses and was #2 in Asian territories behind South Korea.

2. The Grandmaster - Coming into The Grandmaster, Wong Kar Wai wasn't really attracting the public mainstream that much with his movies. His debut was perched on top for almost a decade and a half like a schoolyard bully hogging a game on the playground and not letting anybody else get a turn. The subject appeal of Ip Man and his stylish take proved unavoidable for most moviegoers as Wong Kar Wai scored his biggest opening weekend of his lifetime with more than 1m. He passed his directorial debut in 8 days and Grandmaster's 2nd weekend hold was one of WKW's best of his career. Many of Wong Kar Wai's films have not had great legs and saw decreases of more than 60% in their 2nd weekends. This bucked the trend with gross and holds and The Grandmaster ended up almost doubling As Tears Go By. Its word of mouth was only average but it had already done most of its damage in the first 2 weeks. In the end, The Grandmaster had accomplished setting new records for WKW in opening weekend and total gross and has been kept around in theaters for 13 weeks so far (it is still in theaters), an outstanding achievement for any film, let alone a Wong Kar Wai film.

1. Cloud Atlas - Here's a 3 hour long film that only gets a semi-wide release in 15 theaters and garners the biggest theater average in 4 years since Departures. It stunned everyone when it opened at #2 that weekend with a huge $17,400 PTA. It slaughtered everything in PTA terms as it almost defeated everyone by a $10,000 PTA margin that weekend. In addition, it outperformed The Tower which had more than twice the theaters. Its opening weekend spurred other theaters into action and more theaters added Cloud Atlas into rotation the following week. It was not done surprising though. Its 2nd weekend yielded a 22% bump from more than 20 theaters. It posted a PTA over $10,000 again and it yanked #1 away from Hansel & Gretel faster than they could out-eat that gingerbread house. More theaters joined in on the fun CNY weekend but the CNY holiday pretty much flashes a neon sign that reads, "No holdovers allowed." It fell hard, -64%, but it had one of the best holds that weekend. It inched up 8% its 4th weekend due to the CNY holidays inflating the weekdays. Weeks have gone by and it has alternated between OK and poor drops but it is still in theaters with 11 weeks under its belt. What makes this run even more impressive is how it has done compared with overseas markets. It has captured more than its runs in Australia, Argentina, Netherlands and Spain but this is only the icing on the cake.

HM: Silver Linings Playbook, A Good Day To Die Hard

Losers

3. Chasing Mavericks

2. Lost in Thailand

1. Gangster Squad