Han Bingbin reports on the new releases scheduled for the coming holiday season.

John Woo's romantic epic The Crossing: Part 1, set against the backdrop of civil war and the sinking of the Chinese ship Taiping, opened to a warm box-office welcome on Tuesday.

The movie was released at the start of the so-called hesui dang period, when Chinese like to dress up and spend money on entertainment over weeks marked by festivities as Christmas and the New Year leading up to the Chinese New Year.

Movies set to be released during the festival season from this month till the end of February include John Woo's romantic epic The Crossing: Part 1(above) and Jiang Wen's Imax 3-D production, Gone With the Bullets (top). Photos Provided to China Daily

With the Chinese New Year falling on Feb 19, later than in previous years, this hesui dang is expected to be one of the longest in recent memory, lasting for about 95 days from this month onward.

But for movies set to be released during the period, it's more than just entertainment. Trade analysts had earlier estimated that China's box-office earnings would hit a record 30 billion yuan ($4.88 billion) by the end of 2014. By the end of last month, films had already grossed 26.3 billion yuan.

Even so, achieving the record may be an uphill task.

Despite an interesting storyline and a dazzling pan-Asian cast that includes Zhang Ziyi, Takeshi Kaneshiro and Huang Xiaoming, the much anticipated Woo movie has yet to meet trade expectations.

It made 27 million yuan one day after its release, slightly better than White Haired Witch, a martial art flick that was artistically graded 3.8 out of 10 points on douban.com, China's largest film review website. The Crossing: Part 1 was graded 5.6 by the same site, indicating that reviewers weren't blown away by it either.

Woo's movie has tragedy, and that might not be best suited for hesui dang, traditionally a time of laughter and merrymaking.

Originally from 1980s Hong Kong, the idea of hesui dang was introduced to the mainland around 1997. It was movie director Feng Xiaogang who used the period to release one of his comedies as a marketing strategy in the late 1990s. Beijing-born Feng has since made a living out of making comedies laced with black humor, taking his total box-office profits to more than 2 billion yuan.

In 2012, actor-turned-director Xu Zheng made a box-office splash during hesui dang with his road trip comedy Lost in Thailand. The film earned nearly 1.3 billion yuan within a month, making it the biggest hit in Chinese cinema.

The comic masters are absent this season. In the nearly 50 funny movies lined up for release in the coming weeks, many are small-budget ventures, and none are expected to earn big money.

Even so, this year audiences and experts have placed their hopes on high-profile directors such as Tsui Hark, Jiang Wen and John Woo to enter the 1 billion yuan club.

Tsui will launch his 3-D adventure The Taking of Tiger Mountain later this month. The movie marks the Hong Kong-based director's first attempt at adapting a mainland revolutionary classic.

Starring A-listers Zhang Hanyu and Tony Leung Ka-fai, the movie depicts both battle of wits and weapons between revolutionary soldiers and bandits in the forests of northeastern China.

After a four-year hiatus, actor-turned-director Jiang Wen is back with his fifth directing work, the much-awaited Imax 3-D production, Gone With the Bullets. Set in 1920s Shanghai, which was an adventurers' playground, the storyline develops from a fictional presidential election.

Jiang once explained the film as "an adventure, thriller and romance", but didn't offer details. Fans can expect to find political metaphor in his new movie as that's a Jiang trademark.

Jiang's last movie was Let the Bullets Fly, a bandit-theme comedy and action movie released four years ago. It fetched wide praise and about 700 million yuan at the box office. The new movie's trailer easily reminds people of Let the Bullets Fly, as their English titles obviously make it look like a series.

With a budget of more than 150 million yuan, Jiang's latest movie was made with about 20 cameras, eight production companies, an all-Broadway dancing troupe and a top-notch production team.

At an earlier media conference, Jiang was asked about his box-office expectations from the movie. He smiled and said it will surpass 2 billion yuan.

Contact the writer at hanbingbin@chinadaily.com.cn

Wang Kaihao contributed to the story.

(China Daily USA 12/04/2014 page8)