Mermaid swims to box office bonanza

In a season when blockbusters are deemed standard, The Mermaid has proved to be so splashy that it wiped clean a slate of records and made numerous headlines. The Stephen Chow comic fantasy, which opened on Lunar New Year's Day, Feb 8, set a record with seven consecutive days with at least 230 million yuan ($35.2 million) in receipts each day.

By Tuesday evening, it had raked in a total of 2.1 billion yuan in its nine days of release, poised to overtake Monster Hunt, which at 2.4 billion yuan is the reigning champion in China's box office tally.

Anticipation runs high that The Mermaid could be the first film, domestic or foreign, to reach the new landmark of 3 billion yuan in gross receipts in the world's fastest-growing film market.