A tip-top audience rating of 9.6 on China’s movie review site Maoyan,com is helping to drive sensational traffic at China’s multiplexes for the Zaira Wasim-Aamir Khan comedy-drama Secret Superstar.
The teenaged actress and the Bollywood superstar re-teamed to make the 2017 Advait Chandan-directed film after their last picture, 2016’s Dangal, took China and the world by storm and became the highest-grossing movie ever made in India. The family sports drama, in which Khan plays a father who makes up for his own frustrating wrestling career by living vicariously through his daughters, follows him as he trains and guiding Wasim's character to a world championship in the sport. The film, which was based on a true story, grossed nearly $200 million in China and raised Aamir Khan’s already sky-high profile in the Middle Kingdom into the stratosphere.
My sources indicate that by 3 pm on its opening day, Secret Superstar had already grossed a spectacular $3.3 million (₹21 crore) and that it should top the Zhang Ziyi-starring box office holdover hit Forever Young to win the weekend. In its opening frame last weekend, Forever Young grossed $23 million, and Secret Superstar may actually surpass that figure in its own debut.
Aamir Khan has publicly announced that his share of Dangal's box office grosses in China was 12.5 percent, which works out to a whopping $25 million payday. As a revenue-sharing import quota film, his company's share of Secret Superstar's China grosses is double that 12.5 percent, so if the film runs up its lifetime total to the ₹540 crore / $84 million mark that Maoyan.com projected, that would result in a another huge payday for the Bollywood megastar, ₹136 crore / $21 million from the Middle Kingdom alone.
I should note that early box office figures can be unreliable and subject to change, so I’ll follow up in the morning when the box office figures are more fully baked. But one thing looks like a near certainty: Secret Superstar should collect more revenue in its first China weekend than it did in its entire run in India.
Read More: Aamir Khan's China Collections From 'Secret Superstar' Could Bring His Biggest Payday Ever
