The third installment to Marvel's "Thor: Ragnarok" starring Chris Hemsworth has defeated a field of competitive new releases, including Johnny Depp and Daisy Ridley's "Murder on the Orient Express," to top the Chinese box office for a second consecutive week.
The action packed, fantasy film has brought in a gigantic amount of $41.1 million last weekend for a cumulative total of $96 million after just being 10 days in the theaters, according to film consulting firm Artisan Gateway.
According to an article posted in Forbes, "The Marvel releases have become curiously range-bound in China during the past 18 months, with all of the last four pictures collecting between $100 million and $116 million there. The last movie to break out of that range was Captain America: Civil War, which became Marvel's second-biggest PRC release by taking in $180 million in Chinese coin in May, 2016. Marvel's biggest blockbuster ever in China was Avengers: Age of Ultron, which raked in $240 million in 2015."
The latest "Thor" film - the franchise's third installment - has out-earned the final grosses of its two predecessors combined. To add to that, the opening weekend also marked the highest-grossing opening weekend of any imported film since "War for the Planet of the Apes" in September 2017.
Meanwhile, online reviews of "Thor: Ragnarok" were generally positive, as high-budget 3-D IMAX films continue to draw young Chinese viewers.
China's box office has grossed $6.94 billion this year, already surpassing 2016's full-year figure of $6.88 billion.
The reviewers in China has given high praises to the film's accurate Chinese subtitles and its witty dialogue, which they compared to the talkative Spider-Man in Marvel's recent release "Spider Man: Homecoming."
On the other hand, Sony's "Murder on the Orient Express" has also achieved well in the Middle Kingdom on Friday, however, it slowed over the weekend, earning $19.1 million, a distant second behind "Thor." Director Kenneth Branagh's film, the latest adaptation of Agatha Christie's renowned murder mystery, also stars one of China's box-office magnets: Johnny Depp.
