Cartoon piglet brings home the bacon in mainland debut

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By Yu Tianyu (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-09-07 08:05

McDull, a cartoon piglet, created a fun summer for movie fans and also made a pile of money in a down economy.

The hit movie McDull Kungfu Ding Dong Ding is the fourth in a series of animated films featuring the piglet McDull.

In the new movie, the native of Hong Kong travels to the mainland to attend a kungfu school. His single mother accompanies him to start a small catering business.

Since the movie was released on July 24, it reportedly has earned more than 70 million yuan at the box office.

The movie reportedly raked in 10 million yuan on just the first day and more than 33 million in its first five days of release.

Industry insiders are predicting the movie will out-gross Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf, which earned 90 million yuan nationally.

On a Sunday morning in mid-August at Wanda Cinema on the northern outskirts of Beijing, tickets to see McDull were sold out more than an hour before the start of the film.

Disappointed crowds stood outside the cinema, and one child was crying because his mother could not buy tickets to see his favorite piglet.

The movie was still attracting large audiences at the theater a month after its release. About half were parents and children. The rest were white-collar female workers and young couples.

A worker at Wanda Cinema surnamed Su said attendance exceeded 80 percent on weekdays and weekends, leading the theater to increase the number of showings.

"After watched Kungfu Panda, an absolutely Hollywood-style movie, I was wondering whether Chinese movie-makers are able to use such Chinese cultural elements," said Zhu Tong, a movie patron.

"I'm very pleased to see this McDull episode," Zhu said.

Created in 1988 by Hong Kong couple Alice Mak and Brian Tse, the cartoon character McDull is a child in an ordinary Hong Kong family. He is slow, poor and naive.

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