Homegrown smash hits

370 million yuan.Monkey King: Hero Is Back's take in its second week for a total of 467 million yuan.[Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

Monkey King: Hero Is Back was the week's third winner. In its second week of release, it raked in 370 million yuan, adding to its first-week take to reach a total of 467 million yuan and making it the new champion of domestic animated movies. It has a chance of unseating Kung Fu Panda 2, with 608 million yuan, as China's all-time most popular animation film.

All three movies received favorable reactions from critics and the public alike, in sharp contrast to previous hits that were deemed to be pandering to an unsophisticated audience.

The movies all have rags-to-riches back stories. Monkey King, in its first week, was squeezed by two youth-oriented features with supersized built-in audiences－Tiny Times 4 and Forever Young－to less than 10 percent of screens. It was saved and turned into a sleeper hit by word-of-mouth alone.

Monster Hunt was produced by Bill Kong of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon fame and directed by Raman Hui, who was behind Shrek the Third. It was set to premiere during the Lunar New Year, but male lead Kai Ko was arrested on a charge of drug use, and this led to the movie being denied a public release. Kong made a hard decision－to invest an additional 70 million yuan and reshoot it with another actor.

Jian Bing Man is the directorial debut of Da Peng, a webisode maker who made his name by portraying himself as a loser. The new comedy about the making of a superhero film makes clever use of his underdog image and a parade of celebrity cameos. The jokes and gags are very local and unlikely to be matched by US competitors.