ABSTRACT
Hero is a record-breaking Chinese movie that has sold well to global audiences, including Chinese communities. The box-office takings in Hong Kong are HK$26.6 million (c. US$3.4 million)2, whereas in China takings amount to RMB 245 million (c. US$30 million) (Ma, 8 January 2007). Following the footsteps of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Wohu canglong, 2000), Hero prevails in both the Asian and Western worlds. In the two months that Hero was screened in Japanese cinemas, it set a record of 4,300 million Yen (c. US$35.38 million) in box-office takings – much higher than the takings of Stephen Chow’s movie Shaolin Soccer (Shaolin zuqiu, 2001) and Jet Li’s Shaolin Temple (Shaolin si, 1982), the most popular foreign movies in the history of Japan. In Korea, as the first Chinese movie marketed by a triplicate joint marketing effort, Chinese distributor Beijing Zhongbo Media Company, Korean Samhwa and Korea Picture, Hero generated ticket sales of US$20 million, reaching an audience of 2.4 million, the biggest grossing Chinese film in Korea (Su, 16 January 2003; N.A., 8 September 2004). In the US, Hero exceeded its predecessors in terms of both ticket sales (US$70 million) and number of outlets screened (2,031 cinemas).
