Lost in the Stars: China’s Big Summer Hit Opens in the US This Weekend

Posted in: Movies, TV | Tagged: hitchcock, Lost in the Star, Mystery, One of My Wives is Missing, Trap for a Solitary Man

Lost in the Stars, China’s biggest summer box office hit of 2023, is getting a North American theatrical release on July 7th.

Lost in the Stars, currently the biggest summer box office hit in China, is getting a theatrical release in North America this week, starting on Friday, July 7th. The mystery thriller grossed over $379 million in its first two weekends before its American theatrical premiere from Chinese distributor CMC Pictures.

“Is he crazy? ????

Or is she crazy? ????

The first half is thrilling to the point of breathlessness????

The second half strikes right at the heart????

Do you want to know the truth? Come to the cinema and unravel the mystery with us????”

Lost in the Stars is a Chinese remake of a 1990 Russian feature film called Trap for a Solitary Man, which was an adaptation of a French stage play of the same title by Robert Thomas and has been filmed for American television three times between 1969 and 1990. The plot involves a man at a vacation resort town reporting to the police that his wife has gone missing, only to have another woman show up claiming to be his wife, and his mounting paranoia as he becomes convinced there’s a vast conspiracy against him. Either he’s losing his mind, or this is a major case of gaslighting, and he’s in real danger.

The play was actually made by American television networks into TV movies several times, starting in 1960, with the most well-known version from 1976 entitled One of My Wives is Missing, which starred 1960s and 1970s TV mainstay James Franciscus and Quincy‘s Jack Klugman. It was made again into a 1986 TV movie called Vanishing Act starring Elliot Gould. We had so much fun writing about it before we even heard about Lost in the Stars‘ box office success.

Now, we don’t know why The Hollywood Reporter would want to claim they have an exclusive here when anyone who’s looked at their Fandango or AMC Theatres apps will have seen Lost in the Stars listed for US release on July 7^th for over a week now. It’s standard procedure now for every major Chinese feature film to get a North American release day-and-date or one or two weeks after their release in Mainland China.

There is an irony here. As Hollywood wrings its hands over its increasing inability to make surefire blockbuster hits, China has taken a story, a French stage play that Hollywood has filmed for television three times before forgetting about it and turning it into a massive hit. Think about it: this is a property Hollywood used to have but abandoned and forgot about. And now the Chinese version has made more money than The Flash and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny!  Lost in the Stars is a slick, fun Hitchcockian thriller that certainly cost much less than $100 million to produce, so it’s already seeing a profit. It’s likely to make more in the next few weeks before it ends its theatrical run in China. Whatever it earns in the US from Asian audiences and hardcore Cinema geeks won’t hit China’s numbers but will be gravy. It is very tempting to get sarcastic and say that if Hollywood wants to make a huge hit, they should just take their thriller screenplays and make them Chinese!

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