{"id":376430,"date":"2026-08-31T01:52:00","date_gmt":"2026-08-31T08:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/?p=376430"},"modified":"2026-09-30T08:44:32","modified_gmt":"2026-09-30T15:44:32","slug":"once-upon-a-time-in-the-middle-east-stays-no-1-in-china-for-a-third-weekend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/once-upon-a-time-in-the-middle-east-stays-no-1-in-china-for-a-third-weekend\/","title":{"rendered":"Once Upon a Time in the Middle East stays No. 1 in China for a third weekend"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Wen Muye\u2019s <em>Once Upon a Time in the Middle East<\/em> stayed at No. 1 at the mainland China box office for a third weekend in a row on Aug. 28-30, taking in <strong>174.4 million yuan<\/strong> ($25.6 million). Since opening on Aug. 11, it has already pulled in more than 1.7 billion yuan ($253 million) in mainland China, and current forecasts now have it finishing around 2.5 billion yuan.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">You can see the effect in the broader market. China\u2019s summer box office has now passed <strong>12.4 billion yuan<\/strong> ($1.84 billion), its strongest showing in three years, while the country\u2019s total 2024 box office moved past 27 billion yuan, or about $4 billion, by Aug. 22. Daily revenue also stayed above 100 million yuan for more than 40 consecutive days.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Four of China\u2019s five biggest summer releases are local films. If you\u2019ve been keeping an eye on the country\u2019s theatrical rebound, this streak deserves attention.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The movie comes from <em>Dying to Survive<\/em> director Wen Muye, with producer Dirty Monkeys, the company founded by Ning Hao, behind it. That pairing looks like a big reason <em>Once Upon a Time in the Middle East<\/em> is landing as both a <strong>prestige title<\/strong> and a broad commercial hit.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Once Upon a Time in the Middle East<\/em> is now playing across mainland China, with a wider rollout still to come in Asia, North America, Europe and the Middle East. Its box-office run is also feeding China\u2019s growing \u201cfilm+\u201d business, which links <strong>movie success<\/strong> to tourism, dining and merchandise.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wen Muye\u2019s Once Upon a Time in the Middle East stayed at No. 1 at the mainland China box office for a third weekend in a row on Aug. 28-30, taking in 174.4 million yuan ($25.6 million). Since opening on Aug. 11, it has already pulled in more than 1.7 billion yuan ($253 million) in &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/once-upon-a-time-in-the-middle-east-stays-no-1-in-china-for-a-third-weekend\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Once Upon a Time in the Middle East stays No. 1 in China for a third weekend&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9323,"featured_media":376429,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","wpcf-pageviews":0},"categories":[1015],"tags":[],"usertag":[],"vertical":[],"content-category":[6869],"class_list":["post-376430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","content-category-streaming-videos"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9323"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=376430"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376430\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":376431,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376430\/revisions\/376431"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/376429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=376430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=376430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=376430"},{"taxonomy":"usertag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/usertag?post=376430"},{"taxonomy":"vertical","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/vertical?post=376430"},{"taxonomy":"content-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/content-category?post=376430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}