Box Office: ‘Moonfall’ Lands China Release Date
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Roland Emmerich’s Moonfall is on a collision course with China’s box office.
The film, which opened in North America on Feb. 4, has gotten the green light for a theatrical release in the country on March 25. The movie was co-financed by Chinese studio Huayi Brothers Media, which put up a sizable chunk of the budget back in 2019 at Cannes’ Marche du Film, where the title was the big ticket presales sensation of the year.
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Today, Moonfall will need an against-the-odds heroic ending of the sort common to Emmerich’s filmmaking to escape major financial losses. The movie cost an estimated $146 million to make and it has earned just $18.9 million in North America and $39.4 million worldwide. And the clock is ticking: Huayi Bros has roughly two weeks to mount its local marketing campaign.
The film centers on a NASA executive and former astronaut (Halle Berry) who must team with an astronaut from her past (Patrick Wilson) and a conspiracy theorist (John Bradley) to save the planet after the moon is knocked out of orbit and put on a collision course with Earth. Michael Peña, Charlie Plummer, Kelly Yu, Eme Ikwuakor, Carolina Bartczak and Donald Sutherland also star in Moonfall, which Emmerich wrote with Harald Kloser and Spenser Cohen.
After a slow start to the year, U.S. movies are starting to line up for release in China. Moonfall will follow the China release of Sony’s Uncharted (March 14) and Warner Bros’ The Batman (March 18). Sony’s animated feature Hotel Transylvania: Transformania then will open in the country on April 3, followed by Warner Bros.’ Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore on April 8.
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