Cinema's warm summer

In addition to its domestic screening extending to two months (the usual theater run rarely extends past a month), Ne Zha has also made a foray into eight other countries: Vietnam, Indonesia, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Britain and Singapore.

Annie Walker, founder of Well Go USA Entertainment, which exclusively distributes Ne Zha in North America, says the movie is performing well and has pulled in more than $1.16 million in its opening weekend with a limited run across 66 Imax theaters in the US and Canada.

The film's run will be expanded to at least 130 screens, with some rolling out in 2D format on Friday, she adds.

Following the phenomenal hit of Ne Zha, the second-highest-grossing film this summer is actor Huang Xiaoming's latest effort, The Bravest, which has earned 1.65 billion yuan, turning out to be his best performing film in recent years.

Based on the real-life events surrounding a pipeline explosion in Northeast China's port city of Dalian in July 2010, the tear-jerking film concerns a group of elite firefighters who battle a massive inferno that has put all the residents of the city in peril.

Huang, who stars as one of the firefighters, says he feels encouraged to see the movie has attracted a significant number of theatergoers.

Noting that The Bravest "is the first film of its kind that focuses on firefighters"-a rarely-covered subject for domestic filmmakers-Huang says the movie reveals the human side of those firefighting heroes, depicting them not only as heroes who always rush into the most dangerous situations when a disaster takes place, but also as ordinary people with real-life flaws.

From learning how to quickly put on their firefighting gear, to rope climb dozens of meters high above the ground, Huang and the other actors were trained for more than a month by a domestic squadron of real firemen.

The big-budget film also constructed a life-size replica of the Dalian port's oil tank storage area in a studio located in Hebei province, covering an area of 50,000 square meters and using 50 fire engines. Instead of generating images by computer, much of the blaze and explosion in the film are real and were re-created on set.