Movie star Vin Diesel attends a press conference for his new "Fast & Furious" movie Furious 7 in Beijing, capital of China, March 26, 2015. The movie will hit Chinese mainland screen on April 12. (Xinhua/Jin Liangkuai)
The staggering performance of "Furious 7" in China has left many industry insiders baffled.
The movie, starring Vin Diesel and the late Paul Walker, broke almost every record possible -- the largest midnight screening, the largest opening day (401 million yuan, or 64.6 million U.S. dollars), the fastest to have passed the "300 million yuan" and "700 million yuan" marks, the first movie to have more than 10 million admissions and possibly the first to dethrone "Transformers 4: Age of Extinction" to become China's highest-grossing movie.
Unlike the "Transformers" movie, "Furious 7" is not stuffed with Chinese product placements, filming locations and Chinese stars (except for the ambiguous Chinese background of director James Wan). The series did not even get screened in China until its fourth installment.
Though Paul Walker's death and Universal Pictures' decision to use computer graphics to finish out his scenes have added to its popularity, many Chinese audiences were unaware of the star until they saw the movie.
But, like many trends, there is a reason behind the seeming frenzy for the seventh installment of the "Furious" franchise.
Yin Hong, director of the center for film and television at Tsinghua University, said the main reason for staggering ticket sales are the millions of movie-starved Chinese viewers, who have developed an insatiable desire for great movies.
"Chinese viewers have fewer choices than foreign peers," said Yin.
Walker's death, he said, only boosted the appeal for Chinese fans.
The film was also the first big-budget movie since the Spring Festival. A similar phenomenon contributed to the success of 'Lost in Thailand', which holds the record for highest grossing domestic movie, Yin says.
