League of Gods (Photo : Encore Films)
"League of Gods," a big-budget Chinese fantasy action movie with a star-studded cast, managed to topple Jackie Chan's comedy action "Skiptrace" to take the top spot at the Chinese box office over the weekend. But its performance was rather earthbound as opposed to a heavenly opening which was expected.
Apart from extravagant special effects and "X-men" like characters, "League of Gods" boasts a star-studded cast which includes Jet Li, Angelababy, Fan Bingbing and Louis Koo. The movie managed to score $30.7million during the first three days of its opening which was good enough for it to stay ahead of "Skiptrace," Los Angeles Times reported. It is worth noting that Chan has been personally nourishing this travelogue of China cum buddy comedy project since its inception. The movie saw a change of financier, co-star, and director too.
The plot of "League of Gods" is based on the ancient novel "Fengshen Bang". And VFX ace Koan Xu has directed the movie which features a team of superheroes with special powers. Producers are Charles Heung and Tiffany Chen of China Star.The creative team is as star-studded as the cast -- "Jungle Book" composer John Debney,"The Hobbit" sound designer Brent Burge, "Lord Of The Rings" director of animation Randall William Cook and the editor is Wayne Philip Wahrman of "I Am Legend" fame.
"League of Gods" held the top spot on each day over the weekend while it collected a whopping $11.6 million on its opening day. But thereafter the earnings began to decrease and its formidable lead over "Skiptrace" started narrowing,Variety reported. "League of Gods" is being played on a massive scale which is about 70,000 screenings per day as compared to roughly 47,000 screenings of "Skiptrace", which suggests the latter has a superior per screen average.
The cumulative total of "Skiptrace" for 11days is about $109 million. The third spot belongs to "Legend of Tarzan" with an earning of $5.52 million over the weekend. Since its release, it has collected $41.3 million in 13 days. Nextup, the list has Chinese animation "Shen Mi Shi Jie Li Xian Ji" with $5.30 million, followed by Japanese animation "Doraemon Nobita and the Birth of Japan," with $2.39 million over the weekend and total of $14.5 million in 10 days.
