Domestic films garner 8 places on 2019 China box office top 10 chart

BEIJING - Domestic films accounted for eight out of the 10 highest-grossing movies screened in China in 2019, according to the China Movie Data Information Network.

Ne Zha, an animated fantasy adventure featuring the Chinese mythological character of the same name, topped the China box office chart with nearly 5 billion yuan ($715 million).

The Wandering Earth, a film adaption of a Chinese science fiction novel by Hugo Award-winning author Liu Cixin, came second on the chart with 4.68 billion yuan, followed immediately by Disney and Marvel's Avengers: Endgame with around 4.25 billion yuan.

Two patriotic films that premiered around the National Day -- My People, My Country, a film recalling historical moments over the past seven decades, and The Captain, a cinematic portrayal of the real-life miraculous emergency landing of a Sichuan Airlines plane in 2018 -- both made it to the top 10 list, garnering fourth and fifth places, respectively.

The sixth and seventh places went to domestic comedy films Crazy Alien and Pegasus.

The Bravest, a Chinese feature film putting the spotlight on firefighters, took eighth place on the chart, immediately followed by Better Days, a domestic film that focuses on campus bullying.

The US film Fast and Furious Presents: Hobbs and Shaw came 10th with 1.43 billion yuan.

The annual total box office revenue of all films screened in the Chinese mainland reached a record high of 63.2 billion yuan as of Sunday, 4.1 percent higher than the 60.7 billion for the whole year of 2018.