Box office

2026-08-18

Dear You in Hong Kong

Dear You opened in Hong Kong on June 18, with early box office reported in Hong Kong dollars. Its 4-day total reached HK$3,867,795 and placed third for the week. By late July, the Hong Kong run should be read separately from the mainland total, because the markets, currencies, and release timing are not the same.

Reading the Hong Kong number

The Hong Kong opening figures use local currency, so they should not be merged with mainland yuan totals. One early update put the film’s 4-day Hong Kong box office at HK$3,867,795, with a third-place weekly ranking. That makes the local run useful as a separate measure of demand rather than a direct add-on to the mainland headline.

For viewers following the film’s performance, the main point is that Hong Kong has its own box office rhythm. A local total can grow steadily even after the mainland conversation has already moved on, especially when release dates and exhibition windows do not line up across markets.

Release timing matters

Dear You officially opened in Hong Kong on June 18, after a period of advance attention around the city. The film then continued its run as part of a wider regional rollout that also included Macau and Singapore. Its exhibition window was later extended to July 31, which shows that the run remained active well after opening week.

That timing gap is important for anyone comparing markets. A Hong Kong run can still be accumulating revenue while the mainland market is already in a different phase. The film’s local lifespan, therefore, needs to be tracked by Hong Kong dates and Hong Kong currency, not only by the mainland box-office story.

What Hong Kong viewers noticed

The local conversation centered on the film’s use of Teochew dialect, its family-centered emotion, and the qiaopi thread linking letters, money transfers, and separation. Hong Kong premiere coverage also highlighted the leads Wang Yantong and Li Sitong, adding a face-to-face layer to a film that had already built attention through word of mouth.

That matters because the film’s appeal in Hong Kong is not only about scale. Viewers were responding to the sound of the language, the details of migration memory, and the quiet way the story treats family duty. Those are the same elements that made the film travel well beyond its original mainland release.

Keeping mainland and Hong Kong separate

The mainland total is a national box-office story measured in renminbi, while Hong Kong is a local market measured in Hong Kong dollars. The two figures answer different questions. One shows the film’s broad nationwide reach; the other shows how it performs in a specific city market with its own audience habits and screening patterns.

For a clear reading, the safest approach is to compare Hong Kong to Hong Kong, and mainland to mainland. That avoids flattening the film’s regional life into one number. It also makes the Hong Kong run easier to understand as a distinct chapter in the film’s wider exhibition path.

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