Action Heroes Perform at Taipei Box Office

The Grandmaster was the number one film in Taipei this weekend, where it opened on Friday. WONG Kar-wai's film about martial arts masters made NT$7.14 million (US$246,000) in the capital for distributor Warner Bros (Taiwan) Inc.
Second-placed was Life of Pi, getting a boost from Ang LEE's victory tour to Taiwan to celebrate the film's local success. The film added NT$4.52 million (US$156,000) in box office income for a current gross of NT$207 million (US$7.14 million) in the capital after nine weeks in cinemas.
Third-placed — and arguably the success story of the weekend — was Machi Action(pictured), the directorial debut of Jeff CHANG with NT$3.87 million (US$133,000) in Taipei. The film is distributed through Twentieth Century Fox (Taiwan) Inc, who also handle Pi.
The youth-romance is an homage to Japanese sci-fi series, starring Berlin CHEN as a costumed television actor who is fired after ten years of playing a world-saving superhero. The script is credited to Giddens, director of You Are the Apple of My Eye (2011).
Machi Action is one of half-a-dozen Taiwan films opening in the next six weeks from first- or second-time directors. They include baseball movie Faithball, tug-of-war sports drama Step Back to Glory and Forever Love, an homage to Taiwan's commercial film industry in the 1960s.
Source: Film Business Asia