Cinema's summer love story

The sunny weather is heating up China's cool first-half box-office returns as out-of-school students flock to theaters, Xu Fan reports.

For three consecutive weeks since the start of summer vacation, China's weekly box-office revenue has surpassed 1 billion yuan ($145.3 million), boosting the morale of struggling domestic filmmakers after a first-half slowdown.

With some Chinese schools closing for the summer break in late June, the first shots in the "battle" to get youngsters into theater seats were fired early.