On December 2, Perhaps Love, from Hong Kong director Peter Chan, will be the first movie pegged to the New Year movie market. According to the domestic report Monday, the upcoming New Year releases could bring in approximately 300 million yuan (US$36.99 million) in national box office receipts.

Following Perhaps Love, another three blockbusters by top Chinese directors will be released in December — Chen Kaige’s The Promise, A Chinese Tale Story by Jeff Lau and Zhang Yimou’s Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles.

The musical Perhaps Love, set in present-day Shanghai, is a love triangle with Jacky Cheung, Takeshi Kaneshiro and mainland actress Zhou Xun.

Another love triangle, The Promise is a big-budget fantasy film with Hong Kong superstar Cecilia Cheung, South Korean star Jang Dong-kun, Chinese mainland actor Liu Ye and Hong Kong star Nicholas Tse. The movie-within-a-movie love triangle delivers jealousy, hatred and passion ignited by memories of the past.

Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles stars 74-year-old Japanese actor Ken Takakura as a Japanese fisherman, who accompanies his ailing son to Yunnan Province to search for the secret behind a local opera. Reportedly, the film’s North American rights have been sold to a Hollywood studio.

Past years’ New Year releases were dominated by filmmaker-director Feng Xiaogang’s comedies. A major force in the Chinese film industry, his black comedies Cell Phone, Big Shot’s Funeral, A Sigh, Be There or Be Square and Part A Part B, all so-called New Year films, have been big successes both with critics and at the box office.

This year, the New Year releases are hitting earlier with a choice of action, comedy, romance and musical films. Feng has nothing for the coming 2006 New Year’s Day. Maybe he said it all in last year’s New Year success A World Without Thieves.

(Shenzhen Daily November 22, 2005)