Promotional material for Dying to Survive Photo: IC

Chinese black comedy Dying to Survive, which focuses on a businessman who imports generic pharmaceutical medicine from India to provide affordable treatment to leukemia patients in China, topped the Chinese mainland weekend box office with an estimated 920 million yuan ($138.5 million) to surpass the weekend debut of last year's summer hit Wolf Warrior 2, which is currently the highest-grossing film in China's history. Kicking off a limited-release run on June 30 and official debuting on Thursday, the film has made an estimated 1.3 billion yuan in total and is the 50th movie to break the 1 billion yuan mark in China.

Grabbing 383 million yuan on Saturday alone with a screen share of 57.7 percent, the film set record for the highest single day gross for an original film in the market.

Originally set to hit Chinese mainland theaters on Friday, the film's massive success during its limited-run led to the film's studio to release a new poster on Sina Weibo on Wednesday announcing that the wide-release had been moved to Thursday.

At the official red carpet premiere on July 2, the film's producers announced that they would be donating 2 million yuan to leukemia charities and would continue to donate 300,000 yuan for every 100 million yuan the film raked in.

"This is definitely the best domestic film that I've watched so far this year… it is a sincere film with a sincere story, characterization and production - I believe that most of the audiences that have watched this film feel the same way," blogger Cideng Shuihuo posted on Sina Weibo in a post that has received more than 20,000 likes.

Currently holding a 9/10 rating based on reviews from nearly 300,000 users on Chinese review platform Douban, Dying to Survive is the third domestic flick in the past two decades to garner a 9+ rating after 2000 mainland comedy Devils on the Doorstep (9.2/10) and 2002 Hong Kong crime thriller Infernal Affairs (9.1/10).

Based on the film's box office performance so far as well as all the five-star reviews circulating on Chinese social media platforms, some analysts have begun forecasting that the film's final box office will surpass 4 billion yuan to become the second highest-earning film in China.

With Dying to Survive accounting for 80 percent of the daily box office for four days straight, the outlook for other films on the charts seems dim.

Domestic animated film New Happy Dad and Son 3: Adventure in Russia, an adaptation of China Central Television's classic animated series Happy Dad and Son, ranked second with 70 million yuan, followed by Animal World, a Chinese film adaptation of Japanese gambling-themed manga Gambling Apocalypse Kaiji, with an estimated 57 million yuan.

Universal's Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom ranked fourth with an estimated 26 million yuan for a total of 1.64 billion yuan since its premiere in mid-June, becoming the highest-earning film in the franchise in China.