新浪微博
腾讯微博
微信
QQ空间
QQ好友
手机阅读分享话题

Chongqing News

Twenty Two becomes the first domestic documentary with over 100 million box office

2017-08-23 10:09:26

Scene from Twenty Two

CHONGQING (CQNEWS) -- This summer, Chinese films are causing a sensation after years of silence. Ticket sales for Wolf Warriors II have set the record for Chinese films with its box office receipts exceeding 5 billion yuan. Another documentary, Twenty Two, that was inconspicuous at the beginning has also gained good ticket sales — exceeding 100 million yuan — becoming the top-grossing Chinese documentary. However, this film only cost three million yuan to make and another million yuan from crowd funding was used for promotion and release. Before the film was released, director Guo Ke promised that he would donate all the earnings. The earnings are far beyond expectations, but the director Guo Ke still reaffirmed: “The test has just begun, but I will donate it no matter how much it will earn.”

Chinese documentary’s box office exceeds 100 million yuan for the first time

Twenty Two is on the overall background of the experiences of 22 surviving “comfort women” from the Chinese mainland. Their current living situations were connected and presented by the stories of a few elderly women and individuals who took care of them for a long time. Like most of the documentaries, Twenty Two was unpopular when it was released at the beginning, and competed with commercial films such as Paradox and Peace Breaker. On August 14, the first day of release, the film schedule proportion was only 1.5% and the box office was only 3.95 million yuan. Fortunately, the attendance rate rose to 32.1%, even higher than that of the single-day box office champion Wolf Warriors II. With the increasing public praises, ticket sales in the following two days increased sharply and the film schedule proportion was also increased by 10.9%. Since its release on August 14, it has been watched by more than three million people and sales have exceeded 100 million yuan, still keeping rising trend.

According to the analysis of insiders, the box office success of Twenty Two benefits from the favorable conditions of time, location and people. The film was released on August 14, which is the world “comfort women” day, and following day is the anniversary of the Japanese surrender. Moreover, the Wolf Warriors II movie not only raised a surge of patriotism, but also made the summer movie season prosperous. Finally, the strong support of “spontaneous fans” attracted by the increasing public praises of Twenty Two make the film popularity spread. (Translated by Huang Juan, Fathom Language Limited)

Editor:Jiang Yiwei