'Home Coming' conquers holiday box office charts

As the latest big-budget movie to retell China's effort to evacuate nationals overseas from turmoil, Home Coming has soared as a runaway hit to top the box office charts during the National Day holiday, indicating the potential of patriotic movies in the domestic market, according to some industry insiders.

The 137-minute movie, which was released on Sept 30, has grossed around 1 billion yuan ($140.5 million) as of Thursday, accounting for around 70 percent of overall ticket sales during the weeklong festival, according to the live tracking platform Beacon.

Following Home Coming, Ordinary Hero — a movie adapted from the real-life story of the race against time to repair a seven-year-old boy's severed arm — is sitting in second place in the charts earning 125 million yuan in the same period.

A total of 7 new movies, including another two live-action movies and three animated features, were released for the National Day holiday, widely considered as one of the country's most lucrative box office seasons.

Despite both casting A-list stars, Steel Will, a movie set in Northeast China and led by award-winning actor Liu Ye, and Come Back Home, starring action star Donnie Yen as a father seeking his missing son, have failed to impress at the box office. The pair grossed 56 million yuan and 14 million yuan, respectively.

Due to a lack of big-budget movies and recurring COVID-19 outbreaks across the country, China's movie market has been in a slump for most of the year, aside from a few blockbusters performing well. These include the war epic The Battle at Lake Changjin II, which dominated the Spring Festival box office in February, and sci-fi comedy Moon Man, the highest-grossing movie of the summer.

Most industry insiders contacted by China Daily said they had a great deal of anticipation for the National Day holiday, but all of the new movies released only announced their opening dates a week in advance, leaving little time for promotion.

Lu Jianing, head of Nanning Minzu Cinema in the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, said tickets sales during the National Day holiday this year amount to around one-third of those in the same period last year, and indicated that the lineup of new movies was not as appealing as the year before.

Home Coming sees veteran actor Zhang Yi and heartthrob Wang Junkai, play a pair of brave Chinese diplomats coming to the rescue of hundreds of fellow nationals who are trying to flee an unnamed war-torn African nation. The movie has made its producer, Zhejiang Huace Film and TV Co, the biggest winner in the fiercely contended holiday market, according to some analysts.

With movies usually mirroring the characteristics of the era, China's development in various fields from economy to culture has provided local filmmakers with new inspiration to tell patriotic tales from a more international perspective, helping such movies win popularity in recent years, said Rao Shuguang, president of the China Film Critics Association.

Yan Jingming, deputy chairman of the China Writers Association, said the movie is a "window" through which to examine China's huge transformation on the international stage.