The Expendables took a lot of showings away from Shrek Forever After over the weekend, causing the latter to just make around 51m yuan over the full week after a 13m yuan opening day. Aftershock dropped another 50%.

Actuals:

The Expendables (3-day) - 73m yuan ($10.7m)
Shrek Forever After (7-day) - 58m yuan ($8.5m)

An excellent week overall with total close to 260m yuan.

What is the Shrek's weekend(3days) number?

8/16 - 22:

1. The Expendables（敢死队）- 73m ($10.74m) New 26,718 2,206,104 73m ($10.74m)
2. Shrek Forever After（怪物史莱克4）- 58m ($8.53m) New 28,806 1,282,618 58m ($8.53m)
3. Aftershock（唐山大地震）- 35m ($5.15m) -41.7% 23,985 977,107 629m ($92.81m)
4. Love In Disguise（恋爱通告）- 30m ($4.41m) +76.5% 22,487 997,008 47m ($6.92m)
5. City Under Siege（全城戒备）- 18m ($2.65m) -53.8% 16,045 572,883 88m ($12.97m)
6. Curse of the Deserted（荒村公寓）- 14.3m ($2.10m) +130.6% 12,887 483,434 20.5m ($3.02m)
7. Adventure of the King（龙凤店）- 14m ($2.06m) New 12,431 443,037 14m ($2.06m)
8. Les aventures extraordinaires d'Adèle Blanc-Sec（阿黛拉的非凡冒险）- 7.0m ($1.03m) -60.0% 6,490 234,584 52.5m ($7.74m)
9. The Emerald And The Pearl（翡翠明珠）- 6.2m ($0.91m) +82.4% 6,048 297,774 9.6m ($1.41m)

pepe, not sure what exactly the weekend number is for Shrek 4.

Any updates on inception? Is it still opening on Sept 2?

Good you asked. It just got moved up a day to 9/1.

Awesome. That is just a week away. I hope it opens well. Any idea about its OW potential.

It looks much brighter now than I originally thought. Even with the delay and available pirated version, the interests appear to be very high. I checked several popular and relevant sites in China (think of Chinese version of IMDb and facebook), and the number of people who want to see it still far outweigh the number of those who have seen it:

douban.com: # of ratings - 11,247 (9.3 average), want to see - 84,823
mtime.com: # of ratings - 2,412 (8.9), want to see - 10,493
kaixin001.com: # of ratings - 5,797 (8.6), want to see - 10,607

The film certainly appeals very much to the online crowd, just like it did here, but the numbers are still telling. The 84,823 number at douban, for example, is bigger than the number of people who have rated (not want-to-see, but have seen and rated) Aftershock, even though the latter has been out for a month and grossed over 600m yuan.

Big advance sales number for Inception, especially in IMAX. Could be looking at 300m+ yuan ($44m) total.

Awesome news.

Wait, so the late release and piracy didn't kill it? That's kind of shocking. Sounds very good.

Midnight showings are doing very well.

To give people a more concrete idea and sample of how it's selling, here are the showings for Wednesday in Beijing:

2D: http://yingxun.ent.sina.com.cn/search.php?film_id=9855
IMAX: http://yingxun.ent.sina.com.cn/search.php?film_id=10982

Any clickable showings mean you could buy right there online, and you could click on them to see how the sales are progressing (red means sold, and blue means available).

What are you expecting for the opening 5 days?

I would think around 100m yuan. Can't be lower than The Expendables with two extra days.

So in the neighborhood of $14-15m USD. Very nice. What kind of legs can we expect?

The Sorcerer's Apprentice opens on 9/9, but I don't expect it to post much challenge (could be similar to how The Last Airbender performed this past week). The real challenge won't come until Zhang Yimou's The Love of the Hawthorn Tree, but it's more of an art film instead of commercial one, and it appeals more to females, so it won't be an Aftershock type of competition. Then it will be Donnie Yen's Fist of Fury: The Legend of Chen Zhen on 21st, John Woo's Reign of Assassins on 28th, and Hark Tsui's Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame on 29th, all three of which target males and could present serious threats; on the other hand, Inception would already be on its 4th week by then, and it likely won't matter as much. With IMAX's help and the drop we've seen around the world, I would expect a minimum of 3.3 multiplier from its opening 5-day gross.

So $45-50m total is possible. Sounds great. Thanks for the insight.

Updated my original comment a little. Opening day will tell us a lot, like with Avatar, but it does look like 300m yuan is highly likely, with good upward potential.

Last week's actuals:

The Expendables - 90m yuan ($13.24m), +23.3%, 163m total ($23.98m)
The Last Airbender (7-day) - 23m yuan ($3.38m)
Shrek Forever After - 22m yuan ($3.24m), -62.1%, 80m total ($11.77m)

impressive performance for the expendables, poor performance for the last aibender and hard drop for shrek 4

Thanks xia. So inception follows some of the recent blockbusters which had china has its biggest OS territories ( Avatar, TF2, TF1, 2012 ).

8/23 - 29:

1. The Expendables（敢死队）- 90m ($13.24m) +23.3% 54,579 2,802,865 163m ($23.98m)
2. The Stool Pigeon（线人）- 32m ($4.71m) New 24,584 1,006,922 32m ($4.71m)
3. The Last Airbender（最后的风之子）- 23m ($3.38m) New 18,797 672,514 23m ($3.38m)
4. Shrek Forever After（怪物史莱克4）- 22m ($3.24m) -62.1% 15,132 494,715 80m ($11.77m)
5. Aftershock（唐山大地震）- 12m ($1.77m) -65.7% 11,435 337,932 641m ($94.57m)
6. Adventure of the King（龙凤店）- 11m ($1.62m) -26.7% 13,297 355,526 25m ($3.68m)
7. Love In Disguise（恋爱通告）- 5.8m ($0.85m) -80.7% 7,445 198,358 52.8m ($7.77m)
8. Curse of the Deserted（荒村公寓）- 2.4m ($0.35m) -83.2% 3,673 82,023 22.9m ($3.37m)

Wow, The Expendables is HUGE.

Great for The Expendables. That looks like a pretty good number for The Stool Pigeon. Glad it did well. Do you know how much The Beast Stalker (證人) made opening weekend / total?

Look like Inception is doing close to The Expendables' opening day number, probably a little less. When you consider The Expendables opened on Friday while Inception is on Wednesday, that's excellent. My early extraction from that would be 120m-130m yuan for the first 5 days.