96 Minutes

Source: Wowing Entertainment

‘96 Minutes’

EXCLUSIVE: Hung Tzu-Hsuan’s bomb-disposal thriller 96 Minutes is set to open in mainland China and Southeast Asia, following a strong run in Taiwan.

The film opened on September 5 in Taiwan through Machi Xcelsior Studios and has since earned $1.9m (NT$56.9m) as of Sunday (Sept 14), making it the third highest grossing local film of 2025 to date.

The film rose to the top of the box office chart for the first time in its second weekend (Sept 12-14), adding $840,000 (NT$25.2m). That marked an unusual surge of 63% from the previous debut weekend, when it opened in third place with $590,000 (NT$17.9m) including previews, behind Japanese anime Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Castle and US horror The Conjuring: Last Rites.

The film’s cumulative box office put it behind Gatao: Big Brothers, the fifth instalment from the popular gangster franchise, with a cumulative of $5.9m (NT$177.4m), and trailed closely behind campus romance drama Lovesick’s $2.1m (NT$62.5m) – the two highest grossing local films of 2025 to date.

The film has sold to Damai Entertainment (formerly known as Alibaba Pictures) for mainland China, with a release to be dated. KillerMud Films will release in Singapore on September 25, followed by Malaysia’s GSC on October 9, Hong Kong’s Just Distribution tentatively on October 30 and Vietnam’s Khang Media on December 12. Medialink has taken global inflight rights.

The deals were handled by the film’s producer Jeff Tsou, with June Wu of Ablaze Image as international distribution consultant. Tsou is CEO of Wowing Entertainment whose credits include popular film franchise The Rope Curse, which has spawned a trilogy.

96 Minutes opened the Taipei Film Festival in June and competed in Korea’s Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival.

The ambitious production had a high budget of $5m and is billed as Taiwan’s first high-speed rail disaster thriller. The action takes place mainly on a high-speed train travelling from Taipei to Kaohsiung. When a bomb is found in the moving train, the disposal must be dealt with within 96 minutes before it reaches the final destination, putting the lives of hundreds of passengers at stake.

The popular cast is headed by Austin Lin, Vivian Sung, Jacob Wang and Lee Lee-Zen. Director Hung is an action and crime genre specialist who previously directed 2018’s The Scoundrels, winner of best action choreography at the Golden Horse Awards, and 2023 Disney+ series Taiwan Crime Stories.

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