Big-screen bonanza

This year's record box-office takings - 3.61 billion yuan - over the Spring Festival holiday is due mainly to three blockbusters - Stephen Chow's Mermaid, Cheang Pou-soi's The Monkey King 2 and Wong Jing's The Man from Macao III. Xu Fan reports.

Although most film-industry watchers predicted China would hit new highs during the Spring Festival holiday, few of them have expected the figures to be so astounding.

Figures from the country's top movie regulator show that the week-long holiday (Feb 7 to 13), plus Valentine's Day, saw box-office takings of 3.61 billion yuan ($547 million), an 87 percent rise year-on-year. The big haul from the just-concluded Chinese Lunar New Year holiday is the biggest in the industry's history.