{"id":303126,"date":"2025-11-24T05:17:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-24T05:17:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/303126\/"},"modified":"2025-11-24T05:17:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-24T05:17:08","slug":"bi-gans-arthouse-drama-resurrection-opens-to-16-5m-in-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/303126\/","title":{"rendered":"Bi Gan’s Arthouse Drama Resurrection Opens to $16.5M in China"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tIn an exceedingly rare win for arthouse cinema in China<\/a>, Bi Gan<\/a>\u2018s beguiling drama Resurrection<\/a> opened at the top of the country\u2019s box office<\/a> over the weekend, earning a healthy $16.5 million (116.8 million RMB).\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe film, Gan\u2019s third feature, was a sensation at the Cannes Film Festival in May, earning rave reviews<\/a> from cinephiles and winning a \u201cspecial prize\u201d from the event\u2019s jury, chaired by Juliette Binoche.\u00a0Janus\u00a0Films quickly snapped up North American rights and has set a release date for\u00a0Resurrection\u00a0in U.S. theaters on Dec. 12.<\/p>\n

\n\tResurrection won the weekend over holdover anime sensation Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle, which came in second place with $15.6 million. Lionsgate\u2019s Now You See Me: Now You Don\u2019t also made a respectable second-weekend showing, earning $7 million for third place. The two imports have totaled $79.3 million and $34.1 million, respectively, since their launch on Nov. 14, according to data from Artisan Gateway.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tGan sits atop an exceedingly short list of Chinese auteurs who have managed to generate sizable box office sales with works that feel uncompromisingly non-commercial. His sophomore feature, Long Day\u2019s Journey Into Night, starring Tang Wei, opened with a wildly impressive $37.9 million single-day total on New Year\u2019s Day of 2019. The feat was partially pulled off via a too-successful viral marketing campaign that positioned the film as a couples-friendly date-night feature \u2014 when it was, in fact, a challenging, 138-minute arthouse work about memory and loss. The film received heavy backlash on social media from viewers who felt they were duped by the marketing campaign, which encouraged mass pre-sales.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tBut Resurrection\u2018s robust debut proves that Gan still has plenty of young local fans \u2014 and there is still a way for artistically ambitious cinema to win in China\u2019s increasingly commercial and nationalistic marketplace.\u00a0Ticketing app Maoyan currently projects Resurrection to earn at least $30 million in its home market. <\/p>\n

\n\tEmerging onto the international<\/a> scene with his 2015 debut Kaili Blues, Bi Gan quickly established himself as one of contemporary cinema\u2019s most singular stylists. Occasionally likened to his filmmaking hero, Andrei Tarkovsky, the 35-year-old director is celebrated for crafting films that blur the boundaries between time, memory and dream, expressed through a meditative command of image and rhythm. Long Day\u2019s Journey Into Night pushed these preoccupations to new extremes with its celebrated final hour \u2014 a continuous, 3D long take that enveloped audiences in a trance-like flow of longing and repetitive dream logic.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tUpon its premiere at Cannes, Resurrection was hailed as Gan\u2019s most conceptually ambitious film to date. Structured around six chapters, each dedicated to one of the senses \u2014 vision, sound, taste, smell, touch and mind \u2014 the film is at once a sensory odyssey and a meditation on cinema itself. Starring a transmogrifying Jackson Yee and a radiant Shu Qi,\u00a0Resurrection\u00a0tells the story of a spectral entity known as \u201cthe Phantasm,\u201d who journeys across time through various cinematic styles, from silent film to film noir to the recent present, culminating in a sequence that could be described as something like an existential effervescence. The work is shot through with poignant visual metaphors for mortality and the transitory power of images.<\/p>\n

\n\tAs\u00a0The Hollywood Reporter\u2018s critic put it in Cannes\u00a0in a rave<\/a>: \u201cReflecting on the seventh art\u2019s past, present and possible future at a moment when many believe it to be in its death throes, Bi Gan has crafted a time-tripping, genre-jumping paean to the big screen in which he revives the films he loves and then buries them a second time over \u2014 hoping, perhaps, to resurrect cinema in the process.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In an exceedingly rare win for arthouse cinema in China, Bi Gan\u2018s beguiling drama Resurrection opened at the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":303127,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[5806,136059,6471,49,48,95,75,77,337],"class_list":{"0":"post-303126","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-asia","9":"tag-bi-gan","10":"tag-box-office","11":"tag-ca","12":"tag-canada","13":"tag-china","14":"tag-entertainment","15":"tag-international","16":"tag-movies"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=303126"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303126\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/303127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=303126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=303126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=303126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}