(Photo/CGTN)

BEIJING, Feb. 4 (Xinhua) -- Advance box office sales during China's upcoming week-long Spring Festival holiday totaled around 300 million yuan (46 million U.S. dollars) as of Thursday.

As the first such moviegoing period following the COVID-19 outbreak, the holiday starting on Feb. 11 is of great importance to China's film industry and will be seen as a further hallmark of the recovery of the country's box office market, one of the world's largest.

Topping the chart was "Detective Chinatown 3," a highly anticipated comedy from Wanda Pictures, which has seen advance ticket sales exceed 200 million yuan.

A sequel to the 2018 comedy hit "Detective Chinatown 2," which generated nearly 3.4 billion yuan at the Chinese box office, "Detective Chinatown 3" will join six other domestic titles to screen in China on Spring Festival, the Chinese Lunar New Year, which falls on Feb. 12 this year.

The other six films to be released on the same day are time travel comedy "Hi, Mom," fantasy thriller "A Writer's Odyssey," which was previously promoted with the title "Assassin in Red," mobile game turned fantasy film "The Yinyang Master," comedy-drama "Endgame," animated fantasy "New Gods: Nezha Reborn," and "Boonie Bears: The Wild Life," the latest installment in the domestic animated comedy franchise.

Advance sales for the seven titles opened on Jan. 29.

China's box office continued to see robust growth into 2021 after scoring a record high for New Year's Day earnings. The total box office revenue so far in 2021 has exceeded 3.4 billion yuan.