The Great Gatsby in China Luhrmann says he may make film there The Great Gatsby has made a reasonable, rather than a great, start in China, grossing $US4.42 million in its opening weekend and finishing in sixth spot at the Chinese box office. Jurassic Park 3D - a conversion of Steven Spielberg's original 1993 dinosaur movie - topped the box office with a $US17 million haul in its second weekend. Full movies coverage China - and the other emerging major markets in Asia and Russia - can make the difference a bomb and a success. Six of the top 10 films in China on the weekend were foreign titles, which is remarkable for the fact that the Chinese government allows only 34 foreign (primarily Hollywood) movies a year to be released into the country, in a double-pronged bid to support the indigenous filmmaking industry while curtailing the influence of Western culture. Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby has taken more than $US330 million worldwide. Baz Luhrmann's glitzy tale of capitalist excess is precisely the sort of thing the Party might once have scorned, but these days seems barely to cause it to raise an eyebrow. Speaking at a press conference in Beijing last week to promote the film, Luhrmann said: "Chinese people are getting the idea of the book expressed in the film. There is a lot of seduction and decadence, of fantastic jewellery, of jazz, and diamonds and pearls, and flashy yellow Duesenbergs. Which sounds a lot like the downtown area of your average large Chinese city these days (only with Mercedes-Benzes in place of the Duesenbergs). Chinese filmgoers preferred the 3D conversion of Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park. The Great Gatsby is now Luhrmann's most successful film by a long margin. It has taken more than $US330 million worldwide, 56 per cent of it outside the US. His next most successful film, Australia (2008), took $US211 million, more than three-quarters of it outside the US. The Chinese release could nudge receipts towards the $350 million mark, but Luhrmann's film only got a shot at the booming mainland market because it is considered an Australian movie, not an American one. Although the film was shot in Sydney and much of its post-production work carried out in Australia, many in this country have quibbled with the notion that it is an Australian film. Such disputes could, however, be irrelevant if Luhrmann follows through on his stated interest to make his next movie in China. The Impossible, starring Australian Naomi Watts, also featured in the weekend's top 10 in China. "I'm in meetings while I'm here," he said. I'm seriously thinking about a movie set in both China and the West. China is an overwhelmingly exciting place, and I want to participate in what's happening. It would be a canny move: Australia and China are signatories to a co-production treaty, which could mean that any expenditure in Australia on such a movie might qualify for Australian government assistance while the Chinese elements would guarantee it exposure to what is predicted to be the world's largest cinema market by 2020. Gaining access to the Chinese market is increasingly important to the viability of the major Hollywood studios. A case in point is Pacific Rim, a film widely deemed a failure for having taken just $100 million in the US (against a budget of around $190 million). But in China it took $108 million, with another $20 million coming from Russia and $18 million from South Korea. Incidentally, Australia had another showing in the weekend's top 10 in China - The Impossible, which stars Naomi Watts as a woman caught up in the Boxing Day tsunami in Thailand, was the fifth highest grossing film of the weekend, taking $US4.68 million.