Oct. 13 saw a major changing of the guard in China as the country’s top comedy star, Jackie Chan, lost the record he had held for the Middle Kingdom’s highest-grossing comedy ever, when the $250 million his Kung Fu Yoga collected earlier this year was eclipsed by the new film Never Say Die.
The king-slaying comedy Never Say Die scored one of the biggest weeks a comedy has ever had, anywhere, when it ran up an extraordinary $181 million in its first seven days after its September 30th National Day holiday launch.
Adding insult to injury, the Yang Song & Chiyu Zhang-directed sleeper hit has also thrashed Chan’s new film The Foreigner, which is playing against it in China’s multiplexes. The Foreigner has earned $73 million at best during the same period that Never Say Die earned $250 million.
“At best,” that is, because there have been some rumblings in box office watcher circles that The Foreigner’s reported grosses may have been fudged in the Jackie Chan-owned theaters
Jackie Chan isn’t the only king the Yang Song & Chiyu Zhang-directed sleeper hit has dethroned: it also took down the Donnie Yen and Andy Lau-starring crime thriller Chasing The Dragon, which has earned $69 million in its first nine days.
All told, Never Say Die has earned well over double the theatrical revenue that Foreigner and Chasing the Dragon have taken in combined. The achievement is all the more impressive because the comedy’s two lead actors, Allen Ai and Li Ma, aren’t exactly household names.
Never Say Die has slowed down since the end of the holiday week, but it still has plenty of gas in the tank, and should have no trouble beating the single-territory record for live-action movie comedies of $279 million that’s currently held by the Ben Stiller-Robert DeNiro hit Meet The Fockers.
Read More: Chinese Comedy 'Never Say Die' Tops Global Box Office As It Races To $180M In First Week
