No Time To Die: Daniel Craig’s Starrer Tops China Box Office With $8 Million Start

Hollywood star Daniel Craig’s latest James Bond film ‘No Time to Die’ took credit for ripping the record-breaking local film ‘The Battle At Lake Changjin’ off the top of the Chinese box office.

Throughout Friday, ‘No Time to Die’ remained comfortably at the top of the Chinese chart, with a whopping 55 percent market share in the morning sessions.

By midnight local time, that had dropped to 49 percent and the film was grossing out $7.76 million, including online fees, ticketing agency and industry follower Maoyan reports varieteit.com.

Includes Midnight Previews, Bond’s Day One Total Hit $8.12 million. The last Bond film, ‘Spectre’, opened with a $44 million first weekend in China in 2015 before moving on to achieve a $84 million lifetime score in the Middle Kingdom.

Given that minor Covid outbreaks have recently reinstated cinema restrictions in certain cities and Chinese audiences have increasingly turned away from Hollywood movies in recent years, few in the industry would expect ‘No Time to Die’ to become the ‘Spectre’. ‘ level will reach .

However, Bond’s Friday numbers appear closer to ‘Dune’, which opened a week earlier.

‘Dune’ Scored $6 Million On Day One, Closing Out The Weekend With $21.6 million.

On Friday, ‘Dune’ dropped to third place in the Chinese chart. ‘Lake Changjin’ in second place, now has a cumulative total of $842 million, earned as of 29 days after release.

After eight days in Chinese cinemas, ‘Dune’ has gathered $29.2 million.