Chapter 334

On August 1, when the Asian box office for Three Kingdoms: Battle of Zhuojun reached a massive 290 million, the film opened in North America. Because it needed a quick release and featured a relatively weak cast, Columbia Pictures treated it like a standard foreign-language film. They started by screening it in 340 theaters located within Chinese-dominant communities. If the results proved promising, they would ramp up the marketing and expand the theater count. Since it was a limited release, heavy promotion wasn't necessary—a few days of localized grassroots marketing in the Chinese communities would suffice. Wanted had gone through a similar rollout, but back then they had Jet Li and Lee Mi-kyung's North American connections, which allowed them to secure television appearances for promotion.