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 "The Battle at Lake Changjin",
released to coincide with China's Oct. 1
national holiday, had grossed nearly 5 billion
yuan ($779.13 million) by Tuesday, according to
data compiled by Lighthouse, a box office
tracker owned by Alibaba Pictures .
That puts it ahead of current global
blockbusters including the latest 007 film, No
Time To Die, and Marvel's Shang-Chi and the
Legend of the Ten Rings, according to IMDb-backed
movie data website Box Office Mojo, and makes it
the biggest-grossing war film ever, overtaking
Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk, which took in
$526.9 million.
Having premiered 20 days ago, the
three-hour-movie currently accounts for half of
all films being shown in Chinese cinemas,
according to Lighthouse. It was made with the
support of the central government's propaganda
department, according to state news agency
Xinhua.
Starring Wu Jing, who directed and played the
lead role in Wolf Warrior, another nationalistic
Chinese blockbuster, the film depicts Chinese
soldiers battling the much-better equipped U.S.
troops during the bitter cold of the 1950-1953
war.
The conflict ended in an armistice rather than a
peace treaty, leaving U.S.-led U.N. forces
technically still at war with North Korea.
The movie, which cost $200 million, is the
latest in a series of patriotic titles China has
churned out in recent years. The film has been
embraced by official media, and a former
journalist was arrested by police for suggesting
on a social media platform that the soldiers
frozen to death in the movie had been foolish.
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 One scene in the movie shows
soldiers chewing frozen small potatoes between
battles while their U.S. counterparts feast on
Thanksgiving turkey.
Some cinemas have distributed frozen potatoes to
audiences before the movie, according to videos
on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, with
many showing moviegoers eating them or the fried
flour that was also eaten by Chinese soldiers.
A young woman in one such video cried after the
first bite, saying it was impossible to eat.
"The frozen potatoes they ate give us the good
life we have today," said another Douyin user.
Peking University professor Zhang Yiwu said the
increasing popularity of local films posed a
challenge to Hollywood's efforts to gain share
in China's movie market. "Hollywood's movie
industry produced one standard product for
global audiences in the past, but they might
have to learn how to cater to the Chinese
market," Zhang said.
($1 = 6.4174 Chinese yuan renminbi)
(Reporting by Sophie Yu; Editing by Muralikumar
Anantharaman)
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