Gravity, director Alfonso Cuaron’s acclaimed space thriller, has already been a bigger hit than Warner Bros. could have imagined worldwide and that’s before it reached China. The film opened there on Tuesday and is off to a record breaking start.
Warner Bros. said Wednesday that the film made $4.7 million, screening at 5,854 locations on Tuesday. Variety reports that this was the largest non-holiday launch for a film in China.
Today, the film added another $4.2 million, reaching $9 million after two days. Gravity accounted for 68 percent of total movie sales.
Since opening in the U.S. last month, Gravity has reached $240 million domestically, with another $290 million in foreign markets. The 90-minute film is already at $530 million worldwide.
Gravity features only two actors, George Clooney and Sandra Bullock. Since a Chinese satellite plays a key role in the film, Cuaron was asked by the press there if he made it that way just to please Chinese audiences, reports The Hollywood Reporter.
“When we were mapping out the story, we had to base it upon elements in space at the time,” he reportedly said. “We had the Hubble Space Telescope, the International Space Stations, Tiangong and Shenzhou. That's what was in space; and this is way before China became sexy for the Hollywood box office.”
You can check out our review for the film here.
image: Warner Bros.