All hail Asian box office legend Stephen Chow – it’s incredible how he has reigned over the Asian box office for three decades now and done it through transformation from leading actor to producer and then director. This past weekend was Lunar New Year eve which marks the biggest box office weekend for the Chinese box office, even bigger than Golden Week. This year’s Chinese box office broke records over this holiday, taking in $101 million US dollars, a 78% increase from last year. Leading the way was the premiere of Stephen Chow’s highly awaited new movie, the secretive during the filming process The Mermaid.

It’s basically a modern adaptation of Splash with environmental preaching, Chinese mythology and culture, and the usual smattering of Stephen Chow’s brand of humor. The movie rocketed to the biggest opening for any Chinese domestic movie, taking in $43 million US dollars. The leads are China’s top dog male lead Deng Cao and as usual Stephen finds a newbie actress to showcase, this time young 19 year old Jelly Lin (Lin Yun, who looks a lot like Wu Qian). The movie trailers actually had me laughing my head off, the “I was kidnapped by a mermaid” bit is brilliantly deadpan humor all the way. Here’s keeping an eye out for whether this movie will break Monster Hunt‘s all time record.

Trailers for The Mermaid: