BEIJING, July 5 -- Since the domestic screening of pop singer Jay Chow¡¯s (ÖܽÜÂ×) car racing movie ¡°Initial D¡± began June 23, its box-office triumph has hit the headlines nationwide. This week, the movie became the focus of media attention again due to a news report in a Beijing newspaper doubting the size of its estimated box-office revenue.

    Originally, the movie promoter announced ¡°Initial D¡± had brought in 35 million yuan (US$4.2 million) in ticket sales.

    But an unnamed cinema company spokesman was quoted in the report as saying the company¡¯s first-week ticket sales were 3.5 million yuan and that on average the company¡¯s ticket sales were 15 percent of the national total.

    The journalist simply had to do the math and found that, with those numbers, the first-week national box-office volume for ¡°Initial D¡± was just over 23 million yuan, and certainly much less than what the promoter originally said.

    If, as the promoter said, the first-day national box-office volume was 7 million yuan, 140,000 tickets should have been sold, which the report said was an almost impossible number for a Thursday debut.

    And then CCTV¡¯s Movie Channel was cited in the article as saying the first-week national box-office revenue of ¡°Initial D¡± was only 21 million yuan.

    The article sparked an instant and strong response from the promoter and investors alike. They issued a joint statement, denouncing the article as ¡°ungrounded.¡±

    ¡°The box-office volume has exceeded 50 million yuan by the end of last week and is still increasing by 4 million yuan per day this week. It is expected to surpass 60 million yuan by Wednesday,¡± said Yu Ji, promoter of the movie.

    The statement stressed that revenues for ¡°Initial D¡± were beyond any expectation of many cinemas and that normal calculating methods and practices wouldn¡¯t work.

    The statement also said such doubt was a showcase of how much confidence in the Chinese movie industry is lacking.

(Source: Shenzhen Daily)