China Loves ‘Terminator Genisys’, a Surprise worldwide Hit

Helped by several personal appearances in China by Arnold Schwarzenegger, the film scored $27 million, according to data tracker Ent Group, from 69,000 screenings on Sunday (Aug. 23). Box-office-wise, at least. Terminator: Genisys, the fifth installment of the sci-fi franchise, had a middling box office performance in the U.S. after opening ahead of the July 4 weekend. “That pushes its worldwide total to $335.1 million (€289 million), with roughly three quarters of that haul coming from overseas”, the trade publication says.

Tumor tells the real-life story of popular Chinese cartoonist Xiang Yao, whose nom de plume was Bearton or Xiong Dun and who died in November 2012 of a brain tumor, aged just 30. Genisys didn’t go the route of having a random Chinese character plugged into the narrative but Arnie did go on a huge publicity tour of the country in recent weeks. It has now generated $65 million since opening on August 13.

The same report also mentioned that if “Terminator: Genisys” breaks $400 million it will be the first film to reach this mark while failing to gross $100 million in the US.

“My friend Dwayne Johnson’s film “San Andreas” broke 600 million [yuan] here, I hope “Terminator” can surpass that”, said Rob Moore, vice chairman of Paramount Pictures, at a press conference for “Terminator Genisys” in Beijing on Friday.

Record-breaking Chinese animation “Monkey King: Hero is Back” added $5.57 million to extend its total to $151 million after 45 days in the charts. The superhero parody film features Jean-Claude Van Damme as a villain and is written and directed by and stars Da Peng. A previous version of this story carried Entgroup’s first day gross of $26.97 million for Terminator Genisys, which has been corrected to Paramount’s figure of $27.4 million.