Bollywood and bonhomie

But before he can get to the job, the gadget by means of which he communicates with his departed spaceship is stolen by a petty thief and then by a business empire-building religious guru. Chinese movie critics call PK a biting satire on a social issue in India that the movie sought to highlight. Its debut triggered protests in India.

The title was taken from "pee kay", a northern Indian slang for drunken behavior, because of the alien's quest for a "meeting with God" so as to find his missing sensor.

Directed by Rajkumar Hirani, whose movies are known to make statements with sufficient humor and typical Mumbai-industry flavorings such as songs and dances, PK was released in India in December. Soon it covered 6,000 screens worldwide, collecting $46.8 million at home and another $100 million overseas.

But when compared with Jurassic World, which fetched nearly 1.3 billion yuan from Chinese mainland cinemas until Wednesday evening, as shown by 58921.com, a real-time box-office tracker, PK's achievement in China is minuscule. Avenger 2, for instance, had made 200 million yuan on its first day (not weekend) in the country.

Hollywood's long domination of the Chinese market makes such differences in earnings stark, but with PK among the recent top foreign movies, Bollywood's prospects in China look brighter today than they ever did since commercial ties between the two countries picked up in the last decade or so.

A cinematic aside: Jurassic World has Indian actor Irfaan Khan playing a charismatic theme-park owner and B D Wong, an American actor of Chinese descent, featuring as a scientist in it. But their brief screen exchanges over creating a dinosaur, cast them in the mold of "frenemies".

China Film Group and Huaxia Film Group acquired the rights from Disney India's UTV Motion Pictures to show PK here, with Chinese between ages 20 and 26, comprising the core of those that watched the movie, a trade analyst says. Other than in Shanghai and Beijing, it performed well in cities like Xi'an, Chengdu and Hangzhou.

So, is PK the new bar for Bollywood in China?

"It definitely has created a benchmark for non-English foreign movies," Prasad Shetty, partner, strategic alliance, NPRG Global Partners, says.

His Beijing-based company represents the interests of various Indian studios in the country.