Zhang Yimou’s martial arts epic The House of Flying Daggers has just set a Chinese box office record, bringing in $6.7 million while playing on only 360 screens. That’s a mighty impressive per screen daily average of $6203 US. On a per dollar basis that’s slightly better than Spider-man 2 did in the US this weekend, but when you factor in the fact that Chinese theaters don’t charge anywhere close to as much for admission as North American theaters do – this is, after all, a country where new non-bootleg DVDs sell for as little as $3 – Daggers just kicked all sorts of ass in terms of ticket sales.
Oh … and the previous record holder? That’d be Yimou’s Hero. Which Miramax has just officially pushed back another week to August 27th in the US.
