Salman Khan's Bajrangi Bhaijaan establishes Indian dominance as Baahubali breaks more records

Beyond Hollywood On the official Rentrak chart, Chinese animated fantasy Monkey King: Hero Is Back, in ninth, and South Korean naval thriller NLL, in 13th, were still lingering from previous weeks. Not featured, and victims of Indian’s patchy box-office auditing, were Telugu behemoth Baahubali and Salman Khan tearjerker/image-rehabilitation project Bajrangi Bhaijaan. The latter looks to have taken India’s No 1 spot this week, with an impressive 102.6 crore ($16.1m) domestic take and at least $2.5m in overseas readies that would put it just inside the global top 10. Featuring the actor in do-gooder mode as a former wrestler pinning the Kashmir conflict by helping a mute six-year-old Pakistani girl back across the border, the film continues Khan’s domination of India’s Eid box-office window; possibly of little solace to the actor, whose appeal over a five-year sentence for the hit-and-run killing of a homeless man is still pending. SS Rajamouli’s mighty Baahubali, meanwhile, is striding somewhere between 300 and 335 crore ($47.1-52.6m) worldwide at time of writing, depending on which source you trust. That makes it the most successful Telugu film of all time by a long way, the fastest Indian film over 300 crore, and on current standing, the ninth highest grossing Indian film of all time. The film’s technical prowess, dramatic dynamism and financial heft (the Hindi-language version alone has taken over 50 crore) are prompting some soul-searching within Bollywood – too heavily in hock to its bloated star system, according to some. The winner Evil – the yellow, burbling sort – edged out the superhero delegation this week, as Minions held on to the top spot despite the incursion of Marvel’s Ant-Man. No particular surprise, with the Universal film on release in nearly 20 more territories. The only new observation to make is that, with a steep 57% drop from last week’s $115.7m (£74m) US opening, the mindless Minions torrent may not quite have the same staying power as the more homily-rooted Despicable Me (-42% second week drop) or Despicable Me 2 (-47%). If that plummet continues, the latter’s $368.1m US gross (which made it No 4 film in 2013) will be tough to match, and Minions will be left leaning on its (hitherto powerhouse) international performance to make up the slack. A month in, it’s already on $625.8m, with another eight territories and a possible Chinese release to come. So $1bn overall is still on the cards. Minor Marvel Ant-Man’s going to do OK for its size. The diminutive hero chosen by Marvel to close business on its second phase has been given a scaled-down budget: $130m, against Captain America: The First Avenger’s $140m, Thor’s $150m and Guardians of the Galaxy’s $170m, to compare it to the studio’s other first-instalment offerings. Just as well, because Ant-Man’s $58m US opening – good, but still the lowest for an in-house Marvel offering – suggests Peyton Reed’s serviceable, intermittently inspired romp will not have the same level of impact as the rest of the stable. But this was probably a project with innate limitations: Ant-Man is a relatively obscure part of the Marvel canon, and lead actor Paul Rudd supplied only modest star traction ($19.2m for Role Models and $17.8m for I Love You, Man are his two previous best openings where he was a key part of the package). The good news – for the strength of the overall Marvel brand as much as anything else – is that Ant-Man is going toe-to-toe with other superhero new boys overseas. Taking this week’s top five markets – the UK ($6m), Mexico ($5.6m), Russia ($4.9m), France ($4m) and Australia ($4m) – as comparison points, Ant-Man is outpacing the first Captain America, level with Iron Man, slightly under Thor, well under Guardians of the Galaxy. Interestingly, the one region where it’s setting records next to the above is south-east Asia; possibly Marvel’s heritage, and its superhero pecking order, are less relevant here. So, overall, no danger of Ant-Man’s box office going sub-atomic. Marvel’s Phase Three, which begins with 2016’s Doctor Strange, could be where the pressure is on: lots of unfamiliar faces to introduce to audiences, and more concerted competition as Warner Bros and DC finally get their act together with their own cinematic universe. Monster Chinese weekend Like February’s news that the monthly Chinese total had beaten the US one for the first time, this felt like another one of those weeks where the eastern box-office tide lapped another few centimetres further up the strand. Two local films – CGI/live-action hybrid Monster Hunt ($72m) and superhero spoof Jian Bing Man ($61m) – each grossed more than the No 1 US film Ant-Man, and helped set a slew of records on the way. Counted across four days since its Thursday release, Monster Hunt – Shrek the Third co-director Raman Hui’s tale of a civil war in the monster kingdom – took $109m, beating road comedy Breakup Buddies’ domestic-film opening record from last year; it also set new highs for biggest opening day ($26.4m) and biggest single day ($29.8m). Saturday saw the biggest-ever 24 hours at the Chinese box office ($68.3m), as part of its biggest-ever weekend ($185m), during its biggest-ever week ($282m). Jian Bing Man – which translates as Pancake Man, one of the gallery of goons in this meta-tinged superhero lampooning – is also in line to claim college drama So Young’s benchmark $118m gross for the most successful film for a first-time director. The Chinese Norris McWhirter presumably can’t keep up. It comes as a huge boon for Chinese cinema: a sincere vote of confidence from local audiences who, during the late June/July blackout period for Hollywood films designed to artificially boost Chinese market share, have little choice but to gravitate back towards the homemade. But not with wild enthusiasm in the last few weeks. The successes of the last fortnight, performing-school drama Forever Young and Shanghai romancer Tiny Times 4.0, were run-of-the-mill entries from the school of contemporary twentysomething fodder that has dominated in recent years. But Monster Hunt – a pricey $35m affair from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon producer Bill Kong that is one of the country’s first CGI/live action combos – and Jian Bing Man – which lets online comedy-sketch sensation Da Peng loose on the superhero trend and ropes in a Jean-Claude van Damme cameo – seem even more commercially aggressive. They’re direct hacks of Hollywood forms that feel far more culturally attuned than the fusty period dramas and lavish but sometimes cloying martial-arts fantasias that have made up so much recent Chinese popular cinema. It’s the government that tends to back those, but as the Uniqlo scandal shows, its attitudes and tastes are far removed from the young urban middle-class driving the multiplex boom. Monster Hunt and Jian Bing Man are the latest signs that a change-up in top-down cinema development is long overdue. The future Ant-Man shrinks the kids in 12 more territories, including India, Germany and Spain, while Inside Out – on an emotional rollercoaster of a release schedule that lasts until October, perhaps a mark of how this cerebral title can stand on its own legs in individual territories outside of a simultaneous rollout – comes to the UK. Sony’s Pixels, a rare 21st-century high-concept gig (“80s videogame favourites attack the Earth!’’), is opening wide, though – the studio hoping that retro arcade pleasures and indestructible lower-common-denominator A-lister Adam Sandler are the universal panacea that will speed the film into the most emergent of markets. This week’s 40 territories are weighted heavily towards Latin America and the Middle East. Finding a comparison point for the $110m sci-fi action comedy is a tough one: perhaps 2012’s Wreck-It Ralph, which had a videogame hero but was an animated film; or maybe other concept-driven SFX-driven comedies such as Men in Black and Cowboys & Aliens. Fox, meanwhile, will be hoping lightning strikes twice as they drop Paper Towns in 32 territories – it’s another John Green adaptation, the author responsible for The Fault in Our Stars, the young-adult cancer weepie that took a surprising $307.2m for the studio last year. Robot & Frank director Jake Schreier oversees Cara Delevingne – fast leaving behind her rep as gurning LDN model du jour and building an eclectic filmography – as an enigmatic girl-next-door with a yen for revenge. Top 10 global box office, 17-19 July 1. Minions, $116.4m from 57 territories. $625.8m cume – 65.4% int; 34.6% US 2. (New) Ant-Man, $114.4m from 38 territories – 49.3% int; 50.7% US 3. (New) Monster Hunt, $72m from 2 territories. $99m cume – 100% int 4. (New) Jian Bing Man, $61m from 1 territory. $62.4m cume – 100% int 5. Inside Out, $32.7m from 49 territories. $490.2m cume – 37.5% int; 62.5% int 6. (New) Trainwreck, $30.2m from 1 territory – 100% US 7. Terminator Genisys, $27.6m from 65 territories. $277.4m cume – 70.9% int; 29.1% US 8. Jurassic World, $23.7m from 66 territories. $1.51bn cume – 59.6% int; 40.4% US 9. Monkey King: Hero Is Back, $22.5m from 1 territory. $70m cume – 100% int 10. Magic Mike XXL, $10.3m from 41 territories. $89.6m cume – 34.6% int; 65.4% US • Thanks to Rentrak. This week’s figures are based on estimates; all historical figures unadjusted, unless otherwise stated.