That leaves less time for trips to the cinema. It came out a week before the Lunar New Year, when moviegoers are either rushing home ahead of the holiday or busy shopping for gifts for family members. The problem for DreamWorks, some say, is that the timing of the release was terrible. After all, when a film is that good it is normal to watch it twice,” one audience member gushed.Īll good, but the film may still fall short of its revenue targets. “The Mandarin version is fantastic! It’s so good I want to watch the English version too. But the Mandarin version of Kung Fu Panda 3 transforms the film into truly a Chinese feature,” says film critic Ke Bi. “I used to hate watching films with Chinese voice-overs because I feel like they are meant for old people (who don’t understand English) or those who are so lazy they don’t even want to read subtitles. DreamWorks tapped Raman Hui, director of the highest-grossing Chinese animation, Monster Hunt, as a consultant for the film. The script is also different, making quips about Chinese food and culture. The Chinese language version has actually been reanimated so the characters’ facial expressions match the local voice cast, which includes pop singer Jay Chou and actresses Bai Baihe and Zhu Zhu. For example, on Douban, the popular film review site, it received a rating of 8.1 out of 10.ĭreamWorks has also worked hard to appeal to Chinese audiences, essentially releasing two different films: one is the global English-language version, the other is in Mandarin. In its favour is that the film is getting very positive reviews on social media. “In a market that has quadrupled in size during those four years, anything less than a $250 million final gross for Kung Fu Panda 3 will be deemed a disappointment,” says Robert Cain, author of the blog ChinaFilmBiz. It could collect as much as Rmb1 billion in box office receipts, industry commentators have suggested.īut for DreamWorks, the studio behind the film, that would be something of a let down. The latest film in the franchise opened at Chinese cinemas last weekend, generating almost Rmb400 million ($60 million) in ticket receipts, the highest opening weekend ever for an animated movie (and according to Variety, $16 million more than the US opening). So would the third quadruple its take again? The first film had made Rmb135 million ($20.56 million) in 2008. So many in the audience may have guessed that when the third instalment of the franchise came along, it would feature Po’s reunion with his estranged father.īut what was harder to predict was how strongly Kung Fu Panda 3 would perform in China. Kung Fu Panda 2 (released in 2011) ended with a surprise: the eponymous panda Po (voiced by Jack Black) wasn’t an orphan after all. Panda hugger: Bai Baihe voices Tigress in the Mandarin version
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