Polis Evo, Jwanita continues performing strongly at the box office

There was a big win for Malaysian films at the local box office last week — three entries reached the Top 10, namely Polis Evo, Jwanita and Girlfriend Kontrak. No competition from other films competing for the same demographic this week resulted in a pretty strong hold for two of these releases.

Polis Evo, box-office behemoth of the year, managed to hold onto it’s #3 position for a second week in a row. After three weeks in release, it’s already doing better than last week’s champion — animated family film Hotel Transylvania, down to #4 this week — and star-studded mountain-climbing epic Everest, down two spots to #5.

Polis Evo is also playing in as many cinemas as it was the week before, so expect even bigger milestones (and a sequel!) for the buddy cop saga. It’s set to beat KL Gangster‘s tally of RM11.74 million by the end of its run — we think this will be a relatively easy task for the movie.

Is there a chance that it could become even bigger than Chiu Keng Guan‘s The Journey? Assuming it holds onto as many of its 92 prints for as long as it can, you never know.

In seventh place this week is Osman Ali‘s Jwanita, with just 52 still in use around the country (down five prints this week). This is a fascinating result — Osman Ali’s track record at the box-office shows no sign of slowing down, not to mention reception on Twitter from devoted fans have been tremendous.

A lot of praise continue going towards Jwanita for its scares and general shock factor, so if you haven’t seen it yet, great news: you still have a week or two to witness for yourself the insanity of it all! The National Film Development Corporation Malaysia (FINAS) reports that the film made RM604,365.55 over its first five days — expect it to at least hit the RM1.5 million mark before its done and dusted.

Also spotted on the chart is new entry Pontianak Menangis, landing at #15. We last mentioned the film in our post-Festival Filem Malaysia ke-27 piece. If you haven’t seen it yet, feel free to watch the trailer! But be warned, it might put you off from watching movies for a bit.

Further down the chart, we have last week’s Girlfriend Kontrak. Down to #17, it might not end up with a run as lengthy as its peers, but it has performed respectably and should have no trouble sticking around in the coming week.

According to FINAS, Girlfriend Kontrak has amassed a total of RM500,316.43 during it’s first five days at the box office, and we think it might just double this figure by the end of its run.

And before we forget, this week’s Malaysian box office #1 is officially Ridley Scott‘s The Martian, which stars Matt Damon, Jessica Chastain, and everyone else you know, love, and would gladly sit next to on the pelamin any time of the day.

Most amazing of all, second spot goes to Tamil film Puli, showing that yes, we probably do have enough audiences for local Tamil-language films after all! Starring Tamil superstar Vijay, Indian film goddess Sridevi, soon-to-be veteran actor Prabhu, and Kamal Haasan‘s own daughter Shruti Haasan, Puli received negative reviews but made an impressive debut atop the Indian box office.

That’s all for this week folks, we’ll be back again next week and hopefully make this a regular thing. Cheerios!