All Wishes Come True! 八仙!: the Chinese animated hit is on at 90 Malaysian cinemas a week after opening

A Chinese animated comedy about eight mortals who pass themselves off as immortals is, a week after opening, the third-widest film in Malaysia. This site's listings for 3 to 9 September put All Wishes Come True! 八仙! at 90 cinemas with 1,692 sessions, behind only Chelot and Spider-Man: Brand New Day, and on at six of the seven chains: GSC, TGV, FST, Mega, Paragon and Amerin. Only two films in the country are on more screens.

Eight mortals, one legend

The chains' listings give the essentials: opened here on 27 August, in Mandarin, rated P12, running 145 minutes, an animation directed by Mu Zhengyang with a voice cast led by Chen Hao and Li Shaozhe. Their synopsis describes a comedy inspired by the folk tale of the Eight Immortals crossing the sea. On the fairy island of Penglai, where mortals and immortals live side by side, Lü Dongbin and Zhongli Quan gather He Xiangu, Tieguai Li, Han Xiangzi, Cao Guojiu, Lan Caihe and Zhang Guolao, eight ordinary people of different backgrounds who set up a temple, pose as immortals and promise the islanders that every wish will be granted, with a legendary vault of treasure in their sights and a conspiracy closing in on them. It is the legend most Chinese-speaking families already know, told as a heist.

Second only to Stephen Chow in China

The film arrived in Malaysia with a record behind it. Screen Daily reported on 20 July that it opened in second place at the Chinese box office over the weekend of 18 and 19 July with $39.6 million including previews, behind Stephen Chow's Kung Fu Soccer in its second weekend, in a summer season that had reached $654.26 million after 49 days. Screen Daily's figures stop there; the trade papers have since reported larger totals, but those reports sit behind their paywalls and are not repeated here. Kung Fu Soccer itself is still on at 74 Malaysian cinemas this week, so the two films that led China's summer are both on screens here at once.

Who the chains think it is for

The 145-minute running time and the P12 rating put it in the same bracket as the family films of the school holidays, and the chains have programmed it that way: this week's sessions are mostly daytime and early evening, and a good share are in premium halls, including TGV's Indulge and Beanieplex halls and GSC's Escape Studios. Mandarin-language animation has a large audience in Malaysia, and a film built on a legend most Chinese-speaking families know has an easier introduction than most imports.

Picking a start time

For a film of this length, the start time matters more than usual: a 2:00 PM show ends around half past four, and an 8:30 PM one after eleven. The All Wishes Come True page lists every cinema carrying it, with the earliest session at 10:00 AM this week and the last well after 10:00 PM, and the showtimes page puts each cinema's times side by side, so that a 2:00 PM at one and a 2:30 PM at the next are visible together. Sessions are refreshed from each chain every hour.

Next week is the test. A Chinese animated film that holds 90 cinemas into its second week has done better than most, and the chains' Thursday reshuffle will show whether it keeps them against the September openings.