While the global coronavirus pandemic is far from over, there are countries around the world that have been slowly transitioning to a new normal with the worst of the pandemic past them. China, for instance, has already reopened some of its theaters, with the film Dolittle ruling the local box office.
Variety reports that the Robert Downey Jr.-led film was the biggest earner at the Chinese box office, earning $4.71 million over three days. In second place was the Vin Diesel starrer Bloodshot, which earned $2.61 million.
Rounding up the top ten are a mix of Chinese films as well as re-releases of films already shown in China. In third place was Chinese film Sheep Without A Shepherd, with a box office return of $2 million. Fourth and fifth were Disney film’s Coco and Zootopia.
Chinese films made up the lower half of the list, such as The Message, Ne Zha, A First Farewell, Chinese Odyssey Part Two: Cinderella. All five films took in less than $200,000 in the Chinese box office.
While the numbers may not seem huge, it is still a sign that people are still willing to go to movie theaters even with the global coronavirus pandemic still ongoing. The Chinese government had only reopened local movie theaters last July 20, and even then only did so in low-risk areas.
That reopening was hard fought and delayed a number of times because of the nature of the pandemic. The first attempt at reopening movie theaters in China was around March, but was moved to May 8 due to fears of a second outbreak recurring.
However, movie theaters did not reopen on May 8 because of an outbreak happening at a food processing plant. The date was moved to June 11, but that one also did not push through. The July 20 reopening date resulted in about 4,900 movie theaters reopening.
Forbes notes that while Dolittle and Bloodshot have topped the Chinese box office, it does not signal a recoupment of losses for the two films, who performed dismally in the North American box office.
That said, these reopenings and box office returns could stem the global box office loss by a little bit, especially as other foreign markets start to open. The loss for the global box office is already expected to be around $5 billion because of closures of huge markets like South Korea, Japan, and China.
Whether movie theaters elsewhere in the world will be able to reopen remains to be seen, as the global coronavirus pandemic continues to rage globally. According to the July 26 situation report from the World Health Organization, there are now 15,785,641 confirmed COVID-19 cases around the world. There are now 640,016 people that have died from the disease.