War epic film box office hits 92 million USD

The war epic film "The Eight Hundred" scored a cumulative box office revenue of more than 640 million yuan (about 92 million U.S. dollars) in China by Sunday noon.

This came after Saturday saw the film gross over 200 million yuan, a record high of daily box office sales so far in 2020, according to the film's Weibo account.

Driven by the sales of "The Eight Hundred," which was formally released Friday, the daily China box office sales continued to rise and hit 230 million yuan on Saturday, a new high since movie theaters reopened a month ago following months of closure due to COVID-19.

Moviegoers who had watched the movie in China totaled more than 16 million as of Sunday morning, showed data compiled by Maoyan, a movie-ticketing and film data platform.

Directed by Guan Hu, "The Eight Hundred" shows Chinese soldiers defending a warehouse against the invading Japanese army during the Battle of Shanghai in 1937.

Shot entirely with IMAX cameras, it is the first major Chinese film to hit movie theaters since the COVID-19 outbreak.