Box office blitz for Mao’s Last Dancer

The box office receipts for Mao’s Last Dancer, director Bruce Beresford’s tribute to the life and career of Chinese ballet prodigy Li Cunxin, have vastly surpassed even the most optimistic predictions and it’s now clear – only a week into its theatrical release – that the film will be Australian cinema’s smash hit of 2009. Chalking up a whopping $4,336,115 in its opening week, Mao’s Last Dancer is already the highest grossing locally made film of the year and – hello history books – has generated the fourth highest grossing opening week of any Australian film ever made.

Here are Australian cinema’s top ten opening week earners:

1. Happy Feet ($12, 128, 003)
2. Australia ($9,686,400)
3. Moulin Rouge ($5,242,028)
4. Mao’s Last Dancer ($4,336,115)
5. The Dish ($4,136,880)
6. Crocodile Dundee (3,933,763)
7. Ned Kelly ($3,439,557)
8. Babe ($3,417,604)
9. Crocodile Dundee in LA ($3,079,948)
10. The Wog Boy ($2,655,953)

It’s no surprise that none of the top four films feel, well, Australian, with the possible exception of Baz Lurhmann’s spectacular turkey, which mined a seemingly infinite stock of national stereotypes but felt far larger, grander and, for want of a better word, more blockbuster-like than any Australian film before it. Mao’s Last Dancer isn’t even based in Australia; neither for that matter is Moulin Rouge or Happy Feet. But on these matters it’s always a question of where the moolah comes from.

Read my review of Mao’s Last Dancer here.