"The Taking of Tiger Mountain" took the lead in China's box office sales the past two weeks to become the first film of 2015 to reach the $100 million mark.
The action-packed film by Hong Kong director Tsui Hark, which topbills Tony Leung Ka Fai, is about a communist soldier who fought with bandits during the 1940s civil war in China.
Hitting theaters in 3D on December 23, the war film has earned 693 million yuan or almost $112 million as of January 4, outperforming another audience favorite, "Rise of the Sea Dragon", which grossed $97 million.
Romantic comedy "Love on the Cloud" by Huayi Bros. landed on second place with 120 million yuan from last week's box office sales, bringing its total earnings to 267 million yuan or $43 million since Christmas Eve.
Animated film "One Hundred Thousand Bad Jokes", which is based on a popular Chinese comics series, placed third with $13.8 million since it debuted on December 31.
Fourth placer for the week ending January 4 was Jiang Wen's "Gone With the Bullets", a period piece set in Shanghai in the 1920s. Mixed reviews about the film somehow helped propel its total ticket sales to $82 million since it began showing on December 18.
The third Ben Stiller installment, "Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb," has been showing some box office strength since Sunday and has so far pulled in 29.6 million yuan to land on fifth place.
Expect Chinese cinemas to be flooded with some Hollywood notable goodies in the coming weeks, including "Annie", Ethan Hawke's "Predestination" with Ethan Hawke and "The Two Faces of January" with Kirsten Dunst.
The last week of January is expected to be dominated by two blockbusters -- "The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies" will grace the screens on January 23rd, while Angelina Jolie's much-anticipated "Unbroken" will open January 30.
The latter, which tackles the sufferings of an American Olympian in the hands of his Japanese captors during World War II, could prove to be a big hit in China due to lingering anti-Japanese war sentiments there.
