On its third weekend on release, Wei Te-sheng's character comedy Cape No. 7 is the first local film in six years to climb to the top of the Taipei box office charts.

Over the three-day weekend, the film grossed $240,000 representing a 77% boost on last weekend's numbers. It leap-frogged You Don't Mess With The Zohan and Mama Mia!, which dropped by 64% and 45% respectively.

Including preview screenings, Cape No. 7 has now grossed $660,000 making it the highest grossing local film of 2008 ahead of Kung Fu Dunk's score of $500,000 over the lucrative Chinese New Year holidays.

While Ang Lee's Lust, Caution held the number one spot at the Taipei box office for four consecutive weeks in 2007, the spy thriller isn't considered a local film by international standards. Chen Kuo-fu's supernatural thriller Double Vision topped the box office for two consecutive weeks in October 2002.

Highest new entry of the week was another local film from a first-time director, Gilles Yang's Orz Boyz! The melodrama about the adventures of two rebellious schoolboys grossed a respectable $48,000 on seven screens in Taipei.

Orz Boyz! , which premiered at the Hong Kong International Film Festival in March, announced on the eve of release that it had sold broadcasting rights to NHK Television in Japan. The film is distributed in Taiwan in partnership with Warner Bros.

Noting the importance of word-of-mouth for local releases, executive producer Ma Tien-tsung told Screendaily: 'We did extensive screening before the official release and had great responses from audiences'.

Topics