In a spectacular rebound after COVID-19 closed theaters and dampened last year’s Lunar New Year, traditionally the busiest moviegoing period, China posted record-breaking box office numbers this time around, boosting its status as the world’s largest film market.

A hopeful sign for Hollywood studios that have delayed the release of its tentpole movies worldwide, Chinese box office action sizzled this past weekend. The long holiday weekend netted an impressive $775 million.

Detective Chinatown 3, the latest installment of the hit franchise, set several box office milestones. The action-adventure-comedy, starring Baoqiang Wang, Haoran Liu, and Satoshi Tsumabuki, earned a staggering $424 million on its three-day opening.

Those figures marked the world’s biggest debut weekend ever in a single territory, beating Avengers: Endgame’s  $375 million premiere in America in 2019. The $400 million-plus numbers generated by director Sicheng Chen’s film also established the biggest box office bow in China.

Lensed with IMAX cameras, Detective Chinatown 3 also notched a milestone as the biggest IMAX debut for a Chinese film. The buddy movie brought in $23.5 million in IMAX theaters.

Also boosting China’s record-shattering Spring Festival or Lunar New Year filmgoing period was Hi, Mom, which took in $195 million. The time travel comedy, written and directed by Ling Jia who also stars with He Chen and Teng Shen, is predicted to gain box office momentum.

Rounding out the top five in China’s spectacular Lunar New Year box office comeback were A Writer’s Odyssey ($53.4 million), Boonie Bears: The Wild Life ($36.5 million), and The YinYang Master ($26.3 million).

The record-breaking earnings were made even with China’s theater restrictions at 75 percent, with 50 percent capacity limitations in some regions with higher COVID-19 risks. Mandatory temperature checking and disinfection measures in movie theaters have not deterred Chinese filmgoers. On the contrary, the media reported that many people complained about difficulty purchasing tickets.

In the United States, where the majority of the cineplexes are still closed due to the coronavirus pandemic, the Presidents’ Day and Valentine’s Day weekend, usually a big box office weekend, was sluggish. Snowstorms further affected the movie ticket sales.

Amid such conditions, The Croods: A New Age is the pandemic period’s success and miracle story. The animation sequel returned to the top position after 12 weeks of release, a precedent-setting milestone. With its $2.04 million earnings through Sunday, Croods 2 went back to being number one for the fourth time.

Now dubbed as the movie with the strongest legs during the COVID health crisis, the Universal Pictures/DreamWorks Animation production even increased its tally to 21 percent from the previous weekend, a remarkable feat since it has already been released as a premium video-on-demand.

Two Warner Bros. films are vying for the number two rank. Both Judas and the Black Messiah, starring Daniel Kaluuya and LaKeith Stanfield, and The Little Things, top-billed by Rami Malek, Denzel Washington, and Jared Leto, took in $2 million through Sunday. The Presidents’ Day ticket sales will decide the films’ second and place positions.

Also in a tight race are Liam Neeson’s The Marksman and Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman 1984, with both having a three-day tally of $1.1 million. By Monday, The Marksman is predicted to earn $1.33 million to win fourth place while Wonder Woman 1984 is forecast to take in $1.3 million for the fifth rank.

The remaining weekend (three-day frame only) top box office slots were taken by Robin Wright’s Land ($940,000), Jodie Foster and Tahar Rahim’s The Mauritanian ($144,000), Nicolas Cage’s Willy’s Wonderland ($95,000), and Katherine Waterston, Vanessa Kirby and Christopher Abbott’s The World to Come ($43,000).

In the streaming race, Netflix’s Bridgerton stayed on top of Nielsen’s original series chart for the week of January 11 to 17 (Nielsen lags in its reporting of the top 10 SVOD rankings). Shonda Rhimes’ period drama, starring Phoebe Dynevor, Regé-Jean Page, and Nicola Coughlan, notched 1.386 billion minutes.

Disney Plus’ WandaVision and The Mandalorian broke Netflix’s monopoly of the streaming chart.

Here’s the full list of Nielsen’s top ten SVOD rankings for original TV shows, in order: Bridgerton, Cobra Kai, Night Stalker: The Hunt For a Serial Killer, Lupin, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, WandaVision, Disenchantment, The Crown, Virgin River and The Mandalorian.