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Chinese movie Wolf Warrior 2 is now bigger than Avatar

Ben Arnold
·Contributor

A Chinese movie has just overtaken James Cameron’s ‘Avatar’, the highest-grossing film of all time, at the domestic box office.

In a strong signal that the Chinese movie market is now as big – and potentially bigger – than that of the US, ‘Wolf Warrior 2’, an action movie directed by Wu Jing, has just made a staggering $768.5 million (nearly £600 million) in China alone.

That’s larger than ‘Avatar’s $760 million domestic gross made in 2009, according to Forbes.

It’s been pushed over the top thanks to a new online ticketing fee introduced in China for buying movie tickets online, which, when box office takings are as large as this, can add a significant amount of money onto a movie’s gross.

Even more remarkable is the profit margin – ‘Wolf Warrior 2’ cost a fraction of ‘Avatar’s budget, having been made for just $30 million, while ‘Avatar’ cost $237 million.

The movie, which is on release in the UK, stars the film’s director Jing reprising the lead role of Leng Feng, a maverick special ops soldier who takes on special missions around the world.

The second instalment finds him in Africa protecting medical aid workers from local rebels and vicious arms dealers.

Frank Grillo – who plays villain Crossbones in the Marvel movies – and ‘Arrow’ star Celina Jade are also on the bill.

Though it’s on limited release in the UK and other territories, its reception in China has been rapturous, becoming the biggest movie in Chinese box office history in just 12 days on release.

Back in 2015, some reports – now proving themselves to be remarkably accurate – suggested that the Chinese movie market would indeed overtake the US in 2017.

Now that China is producing its own blockbusters in its own language, whether it will need to import as many movies of that ilk from the US in the future is likely keeping studio executives awake at night. And this news won’t help matters at all.

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