Hollywood
‘Interstellar’ continues to dominate south east Asian screens
NEW DELHI: Filmmaker Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar topped the Greater China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and the South Korea box office for the second consecutive weekend.
In South Korea, the sci-fi epic earned an additional 14.4 billion (US$13.1 million) from 1.79 million admissions, representing a 6.5 per cent week-on-week increase. After 11 days in cinemas, it has earned 38.7 billion (US$35.1 million) from 4.84 million admissions. It is already the third-highest grossing foreign film in South Korea this year.
In Greater China where it opened several days later than most of the world, the sci-fi epic opened in Mainland China last Wednesday. Released in 2-D and IMAX, it earned RMB259 million (US$42.2 million) from approximately 7.19 million admissions.
After a slow start, grosses picked up considerably over the weekend, earning RMB194 million (US$31.6 million) from approximately 5.38 million admissions between Friday and Sunday. It represented approximately 29.5 per cent of all screenings over the weekend.
Four years ago, Nolan’s Inception (2010) made RMB101 million (US$16.5 million) in its first five days, and RMB475 million (US$77.5 million) during its theatrical run.
Interstellar will have to defend the top spot from Wong Fei- hung reboot Rise of the Legend and World War II war film Fury this weekend.
Interstellar also remained at the top of the box office in Taiwan, earning NT$19.9 million (US$649,000) in Taipei after a week-on-week drop of only 9 per cent. After two weekends, the sci-fi epic has made NT$56.9 million (US$1.85 million) in the capital.
In Hong Kong, Interstellar had a small week-on-week drop in its second weekend. From 45 locations, it made an additional HK$11.2 million (US$1.44 million) between Thursday and Sunday, representing a week-on-week drop of only 4 per cent.
After two weekends, the film has made HK$27.2 million (US$3.50 million).
Hollywood
Utopai Studios partners Huace to deploy PAI for long form content
Deal includes revenue sharing as Huace adopts AI engine across global ops
MUMBAI: Lights, camera… algorithm, the script just got a silicon co-writer. In a move that signals how storytelling itself is being re-engineered, U.S.-based Utopai Studios has partnered China’s Huace Film & TV Co. Ltd. to bring artificial general intelligence into the heart of long-form content creation.
At the centre of the deal is PAI, Utopai’s cinematic storytelling system, which Huace will deploy as a core engine across its production pipeline from development and creative iteration to global localisation. The partnership includes a large-scale annual usage commitment from Huace, alongside a usage-based revenue-sharing model, underscoring both ambition and commercial confidence on both sides.
For Huace, one of China’s largest film and television companies, the bet is not on automation alone but on scale with control. With distribution spanning over 200 countries and a presence across more than 20 international platforms, including Netflix and YouTube, the company brings a vast content ecosystem where even marginal efficiency gains can translate into significant output shifts. Its extensive TV IP library further positions it as fertile ground for AI-assisted storytelling workflows.
The choice of PAI follows what Huace described as a rigorous evaluation of existing AI tools, many of which remain limited to fragmented use cases such as video generation or editing. What tipped the scales, according to the company, was PAI’s ability to handle long-form narrative complexity maintaining continuity, structure, and creative coherence across entire story arcs rather than isolated clips.
Utopai, for its part, is using the partnership to anchor its international expansion strategy, pitching PAI as an enterprise-ready system built for customisation, privacy, and regulatory adaptability across markets. That positioning becomes particularly relevant as global media companies increasingly scrutinise how AI integrates into proprietary workflows.
The timing is notable. Earlier this month, Utopai upgraded PAI to support three-minute 4K video generation and advanced multi-shot sequencing features designed to tackle one of AI storytelling’s biggest hurdles: consistency across scenes.
What emerges is not just another tech collaboration, but a glimpse into how the grammar of filmmaking could evolve. Because if stories were once crafted frame by frame, the next chapter might just be coded scene by scene.
