New Movie ELYSIUM Box office ELYSIUM Matt Damon Strikes Back With ELYSIUM

South African director Neil Blomkamp's Hollywood debut, Elysium, scores a solid RMB72 Million opening weekend, while Hong Kong's own Barbara Wong continues to enjoy cross-border success with romance, The Stolen Years.

Aided by a star turn from Matt Damon, and a seemingly unquenchable thirst for all things sci-fi, Elysium opened strongly in China last weekend, despite the film's muted reception in many other markets. Taiwan-set amnesia drama The Stolen Years builds on its solid opening from last weekend, and has now netted close to RMB 120 Million in its first 11 days.

Following two strong weeks in pole position, Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park 3D re-release falls to fourth place, while Pixar's animated sequel Monsters University also falls one place to fifth position, allowing Baz Luhrman's flamboyant adaptation of The Great Gatsby to move up the chart. It opened 6th last week, but now finds itself in 3rd place, despite having only taken RMB 59 Million.

Three new Chinese language entries - Hong Kong comedy The Midas Touch, starring Chapman To and Charlene Choi, horror flick Dead Sign and romance Time Travel Love - all scraped into the Top 10, but failed to make any significant impression on the charts.

Next week sees The Smurfs 2 arrive on Chinese shores, which will be pitted against star-studded local thriller Witness, starring Sun Honglei and Aaron Kwok, and Zhang Ziyi's sequel to 2009's Sophie's Revenge, My Lucky Star, opening on 17 September.