Poster of ‘The Wandering Earth II’ in UK & Ireland Cinemas Photo: Courtesy of Trinity CineAsia

Chinese sci-fi blockbuster The Wandering Earth II has recorded the highest box office for a Chinese movie in the British market for 15 years, according to Trinity CineAsia, an all-rights film distributor in the UK.

"The movie is being screened in around 50 cinemas in more than 30 cities in the UK and Ireland. It's the highest grossing Chinese-language film in the UK for 15 years," Manda Tang, marketing manager at Trinity CineAsia, told the Global Times.

It also took top spot in terms of opening weekend box office among Chinese-language films in the UK. The stunning interstellar blockbuster was released in UK cinemas on January 27, a week after its release in China and the US.

Boasting incredible and epic visuals, The Wandering Earth II is a prequel to the original, which was also a huge box office success, raking in $700m. It tells a story set several years before the events of the original film as mankind builds engines to propel the planet to a new solar system due to the rapidly expanding sun.
 
Like its predecessor, The Wandering Earth II is based on the popular novella by science fiction author Liu Cixin, world renowned for his best-selling novel The Three Body Problem. Directed by Frant Gwo, the movie stars Wu Jing alongside new cast members Andy Lau, Li Xuejian, Sha Yi, Ning Li, Wang Zhi and Zhu Yanmanzi.

According to Tang, around 80 percent of the UK box office comes from Chinese people, mainly overseas students and Chinese people living in the UK. Some even watched the movie for a second time at the Cineworld Leicester Square IMAX theatre in London.

"The high quality of the production and the wonderful performance by the cast helped promote the film itself," Tang said, adding that a UK release soon after the release in China is also very important as it catches the trending momentum in newspapers and social media, making moviegoers want to share their excitement and feelings.

However, the British film market remains comparatively small for Chinese-language films. Unlike kung fu films, which have a bigger audience base in the UK, other kinds of Chinese-language films are less popular. 
 
There are different languages featured in The Wandering Earth II, but only a limited amount of English is spoken. 

Audiences generally don't like to watch foreign-language movies with subtitles, unless it's a famous Oscar-winning film like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Tang said. "The attendance rate is far beyond our expectations already," she added.

Chris Berry, a professor of Film Studies at King's College London, said after the movie premiere that the production values are very high. "They really made a huge effort with this film," Berry said, adding that the effort to tell a kind of global story, not just a Chinese story, and to reach out to the whole world “is very ambitious.”

Berry noticed that there are two sets of very Chinese values that the film tries to connect with global values: the importance of family and self sacrifice. 

"The film has all the qualities that enable it to reach out," he said. 

The movie will be shown in UK cinemas until February 16.