Sun Wukong is the king of the Chinese box office

Last weekend, ‘A Chinese Odyssey: Part 3’ topped the box office in Mainland China, earning over RMB 224 million in its first five days of release. The film is directed by Jeff Lau, who helmed the 1995 Hong Kong films ‘A Chinese Odyssey Part 1: Pandora’s Box’ and ‘A Chinese Odyssey Part 2: Cinderella’, both starring superstar Stephen Chow.

‘Odyssey 3’ looks set to join a long list of recent blockbusters based on the classic Chinese novel ‘Journey to the West’ written by Wu Cheng’en that tells the story of Sun Wukong the Monkey King, which include:

2013: The Stephen Chow-directed ‘Journey to the West’ earned RMB 1.4 billion at the Chinese box office.

2014: Soi Cheang’s ‘The Monkey King’, starring Donnie Yen, Chow Yun Fat and Aaron Kwok, earned RMB 1 billion.

2015: ‘Monkey King: Hero is Back’, an animated film by first time director Tian Xiaopeng, earned RMB 1 billion and became the all-time highest grossing animated film in China at the time.

2016: Soi Cheang’s ‘The Monkey King 2’, starring Aaron Kwok and Gong Li, earned RMB 1.2 billion.

This trend is probably going to continue for a little while longer, as there are already two other Sun Wukong films scheduled for release in the next two years:

2017: ‘Journey to the West 2’ directed by Tsui Hark and produced by Stephen Chow.

2018: Soi Cheang’s ‘The Monkey King 3’.

And as long as these films continue to do well at the box office, there will certainly be more to come…