China weekend slows
Variety reported a slow weekend at the Chinese box office, with local drama It’s OK taking the top spot on about $4.6 million. The weekend’s muted returns underline uneven short‑term performance in China’s market. (variety.com)
China’s box office cooled sharply on April 10 to 12, with “It’s OK” winning the weekend on just $4.6 million. (variety.com) The Yang Lina drama earned RMB31 million in its second full weekend and reached $18.7 million in total, according to Artisan Gateway. Universal’s “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie” fell to second with $3.3 million, and Columbia’s “Project Hail Mary” took third with $3 million. (variety.com) Two new local titles filled out the top five: “The Caged Butterfly” opened with $2.4 million, and “Now I Met Her” added $1.8 million for an $8 million total. The full market gross was $21 million, which Variety said was the second-lowest weekend of 2026 so far. (variety.com) That drop came one week after a much stronger April 3 to 5 frame, when “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie” opened to $8.3 million and the overall weekend reached $39.5 million. In that earlier frame, “It’s OK” was still climbing, taking $6.1 million for second place. (variety.com) The calendar also mattered. China’s Qingming Festival holiday ran from April 4 to 6, and holiday ticket sales topped 227 million yuan, or about $33 million, by the morning of April 6, lifting theater traffic before the market fell back to a regular weekend pace. (news.cgtn.com) The slower weekend fits a choppy 2026 pattern in China, where some holiday periods still produce bursts of demand but ordinary frames have been thin. Mainland China’s year-to-date box office stood at $1.84 billion as of April 12, down 50.1% from the same point in 2025. (variety.com) Weekend data compiled by Box Office Mojo shows how uneven that has been: China posted $212.2 million on February 20 to 22, then fell to $50.1 million the next weekend and to $12.2 million on March 27 to 29. The April 10 to 12 result extended that stop-and-start run after the Lunar New Year surge had already faded. (boxofficemojo.com) For now, “It’s OK” sits at the top of a soft market rather than a booming one. The weekend showed that in China, a No. 1 film can still arrive with a modest gross when the release calendar and audience turnout both thin out. (variety.com)
