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Stephen Chow's latest comedy Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons took millions of people on a magical adventure during the nation's largest holiday, and landed on top of the country's box-office charts, contributing to record-breaking holiday ticket sales.
Box-office revenue from the Spring Festival holiday from Feb 9 to Feb 15, which this year coincided with Valentine's Day, was an all-time high of 755 million yuan ($121 million).
The takings for Chow's blockbuster, featuring Wen Zhang, Shu Qi and Huang Bo, accounted for 66.7 percent of all ticket sales during the period, according to a posting by China Film News on micro-blogging service Sina Weibo.
The film took 76.7 million yuan on its first day of release on Feb 10 on the Chinese mainland. It also smashed the opening-day record for domestic films by beating last year's 70 million yuan made by Chinese film Painted Skin: Resurrection.
Chow's film also set box-office records for a single day for a Chinese movie for three consecutive days, said its producer Huayi Brothers Media Group Co Ltd.
Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons, an adaptation of a classic Chinese novel, earned more than 640 million yuan in eight days by Sunday.
The shares of the film's producer and distributor, Huayi Brothers, rose 8.58 percent on Monday to 20.63 yuan. Guotai Junan Securities Co Ltd estimated that the film's total box-office revenue will reach 1.3 billion yuan, to become the highest-grossing domestic film ever.
Huayi Brothers' epic drama Back to 1942, directed by Feng Xiaogang, failed to impress the majority of moviegoers at the end of last year.
The historical drama, with a budget estimated at 200 million yuan, lost the race to actor-director Xu Zheng's comedy Lost in Thailand.
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