Stalingrad, The Movie, Overwhelming Success at Chinese Box Office [Watch Trailer]
Stalingrad The Movie, is a controversial 3D depiction of World War II’s greatest battle between Hitler and Stalin. Confounding all predictions, it has become the highest-grossing Russian release ever at the Chinese box office.
Stalingrad, directed by Fedor Bondarchuk, has taken $8.3 million since its release in China last Thursday. It’s initial distribution was on 7,136 screens, including 123 in IMAX 3D.
According to Sony, this is the best-ever start for a non-Chinese and non-Hollywood film in the country.
The figure means that Stalingrad, which was made on a $30 million budget, has already taken $55 million in total box office receipts. Over the weekend It added $2.6 million at the domestic Russian box office, bringing its local total to $47.7 million.
Alexander Rodnyansky, the producer of Stalingrad said:
The success of Stalingrad is a convincing testament to the fact that an alliance between Russian filmmakers, IMAX technology and Hollywood studios can create films that will be appreciated by audiences in multiple markets. “We are very grateful to our partners at Sony China for the incredible marketing campaign that they mounted in support of our film and to our partners at IMAX Corporation.
Stalingrad will be submitted by Russia for an Oscar in the category of the best foreign language film. Stalingrad has proved to be extremely controversial in Russia, where an online petition is underway to have it banned on the grounds that it is historically inaccurate and portrays German soldiers in too sympathetic a light.
The real battle of Stalingrad took placed between August 1942 and February 1943, when German forces under Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus surrendered to the Red Army The battle for Stalingrad cost the lives of more than 470,000 Russian troops. It is estimated that as many as 850,000 Axis (Germany and its allies, Romania and Hungary) were wounded, or missing.
Some 91,000 German troops surrendered and went into captivity. Within a few weeks 27,000 had died; only between 5,000 – 6,000 returned home up to 10 years after the end of the war in 1945.
