On July 17, fans of Stephen Chow (Xingye) announced through a complete chain of evidence that they successfully recovered over 1.6 million yuan stolen box office for the movie “Kung Fu Women’s Soccer”. More than 90 cinemas were involved in the case, and the cinemas were ordered to rectify and make repayments.
“Kung Fu Women’s Soccer” stars Zhang Xiaofei, Dilraba Dilmurat, Zhang Yixing with special appearances by Carina Lau and Japanese actor Takeru Sato. The film combines elements of Shaolin kung fu and soccer, telling the story of the women’s soccer team “Emei Team” fighting back to win the championship at the “Supreme Invincible Cup”.
After its release on July 11, the film presented a scenario of “soaring box office all the way, mixed reviews”. The film had high heat on ticketing platforms and in the secondary market, but its rating on Douban was only 6.6, sparking intense debates between film critics and ordinary audiences.
Recently, a netizen posted screenshots on social media showing scans of tickets for “Kung Fu Women’s Soccer”, but instead of the film, the system displayed tickets for two almost unknown movies, “Crevasse” and “Flower Rain”. This detail was keenly captured by fans who had been monitoring box office data for a long time.
The Stephen Chow fan club stated in a post that before the release of “Kung Fu Women’s Soccer”, the box office for these two unpopular movies was stagnant; after the release of “Kung Fu Women’s Soccer”, “Crevasse” surged to 387,300 yuan in single-day box office, and “Flower Rain” rose from over 10,000 to 128,400 yuan on the same day. When the ticket theft incident was exposed and became a hot search topic, the box office for both films collapsed instantly, returning to their original levels. The peak time frame coincided completely with the release period of “Kung Fu Women’s Soccer”.
Led by the Stephen Chow Baidu Bar and fan club, a nationwide horizontal contact was made to collect physical tickets and screenshots from ticket selling back offices, revealing the operations of cinemas one by one. They found that while audiences paid for tickets to watch “Kung Fu Women’s Soccer”, the front desks were secretly printing tickets for unpopular films and entering them into the system. Cinemas used unpopular movies as “shells” to divert box office earnings, transferring the profits quietly to small accounts to evade profit-sharing mechanisms for personal gain. More than 90 cinemas across the country were implicated in the case.
Faced with evidence of abnormal box office curves, counterfeit physical tickets, and sales back office screenshots, the fraudulent behavior of many cinemas was confirmed. All involved cinemas were ordered to rectify and repay their fraudulent activities, returning the stolen box office of over 1.6 million yuan to “Kung Fu Women’s Soccer”.
On the other side of the incident, Stephen Chow himself shared a handwritten movie ticket for “Kung Fu Women’s Soccer” on Instagram on the evening of July 16 with no caption, only three question marks “???” Cinema operators later responded, claiming it was a “misunderstanding” due to “moist ticket paper not being printed with ink”, but this explanation clearly did not quell the doubts of netizens. The next day, the production team announced the implementation of segmented key technology starting from July 17, immediately stopping the distribution of subsequent keys upon detecting abnormal activities in cinemas, severing the chain of stealing box office from the technical source and terminating cooperation with violative cinemas.
The fan club’s post stated: “These are just ordinary fans who, with data, evidence, and fiery enthusiasm, personally recovered the complete records of the 1.6 million box office stolen from ‘Kung Fu Women’s Soccer’ from the black hands of ticket thieves.”
The latest data from the Professional Edition of “Maoyan” as of 5:30 p.m. on July 18 revealed that after 8 days of release, “Kung Fu Women’s Soccer” had accumulated a total box office of 1.268 billion yuan.
Some viewpoints suggest that the actual stolen box office may be more than just 1.6 million yuan, but after a large-scale recovery operation, cinemas have already rectified a lot. For fans of Stephen Chow, this may not just be about reclaiming money, but also about tearing open a gap in the “unwritten rules of the industry” and responding to the silence behind the three question marks of Stephen Chow: if you don’t speak, we’ll speak up for you.