China collects $27.8m for ‘No Time To Die’ opening weekend
01-Nov-2021 • No Time To Die
‘No Time To Die’ was facing two uphill battles at the box-office for its opening weekend in China, but still managed to land a $27.8m debut.
With the film being released several weeks behind the rest of the world, spoilers online could have dented the audience appetite, but the biggest factor working against the film was the Chinese government closing cinemas in certain parts of the country (including Beijing) to curtail the worst COVID outbreak since the start of the pandemic. 1,400 cinemas in 14 provinces were shuttered, but that was only approximately 13% of the screens available.
$4.4m of the China debut came from IMAX screens.
Bond landed the #1 spot ahead of the Chinese box-office juggernaut ‘The Battle at Lake Changjin’. Fellow Western newcomer ‘Dune’ made it to #3 in its second week. ‘Dune’ dropped from $21m to $5m week to week. It is unlikely that ‘No Time To Die’ will suffer such a large drop due to audience familiarity and high social platform scores for the film, but it would take something extraordinary for ‘No Time To Die’ to match the performance of ‘SPECTRE’ in China.
