After winning the Golden Globe Awards’ best motion picture – foreign language honors, Minari went on to conquer the box office in South Korea where it opened at the top with $2.2 million.

Those figures were enough for the film, directed by Lee Isaac Chung, to beat Disney’s Raya and the Last Dragon, which ended second place in the Korean box office with $1 million. Minari’s earnings also marked the biggest debut of an American movie since Pixar’s Soul in January.

Minari, starring Steven Yeun, Yeri Han, Noel Cho, Alan S. Kim, and Yuh-jung Youn as an immigrant family struggling to start a farm in Arkansas in the 1980s, also opened in limited release in New Zealand and Australia.

In Russia, however, Raya and the Last Dragon, which introduces Disney’s first Southeast Asian princess (voiced by Kelly Marie Tran), bowed at number one with $2.8 million.

The animated action-adventure, directed by Don Hall and Carlos Lopez Estrada, also debuted at the top in Thailand, Singapore, Taiwan, Indonesia, UAE, Oman, Qatar, Bolivia, Uruguay, Ecuador, Trinidad, Sweden, Finland, Iceland, Spain and Australia.

In China, the film inspired by diverse Southeast Asian cultures was expected to earn more but it only made $8.4 million.

With a voice cast that includes Awkwafina, Gemma Chan, Sandra Oh, Daniel Dae Kim, and Benedict Wong, and with good word of mouth, Raya and the Last Dragon may end up performing better in the long run in the world’s biggest film market.

Director Ling Jia’s comedy-drama, Hi, Mom still dominated the Chinese box office with $23 million.

The time-travel family film, top-billed by Ling Jia herself, Xiaofei Zhang, and Teng Shen, has amassed $784 million so far. With that amount, Hi, Mom is now the second biggest earning movie in China’s history.

Rounding out the top five are Endgame ($10.7 million), Raya and the Last Dragon, and A Writer’s Odyssey ($5.75 million).

In the international market, director Tim Story’s Tom & Jerry, the live-action/animation hybrid voiced by Chloe Grace Moretz and Michael Peña, took in $5 million for an overseas tally of $34.3 million so far.

In the United States box office race, the good news was that movie theaters in New York and San Francisco were allowed to reopen but with strict safety guidelines.

In New York, for example, the cineplexes can only be at 25 percent capacity, with mandatory face masks, air filtration systems, and spread-out seating.

The end of theater shut down in those two major cities, although with limited capacity restrictions, may have boosted the weekend box office earnings to their highest levels in this coronavirus pandemic season.

Raya and the Last Dragon emerged on top with $8.6 million. Box office analysts were quoted as saying that Raya’s earnings were dinged by the fact that several major exhibitors, including Cineplex, Harkins, and Cinemark, did not play the movie due to their stalled licensing terms negotiations with Disney.

Tom & Jerry came in second place with $6.6 million, which added to the movie’s cumulative earnings of $23 million after 10 days of release.

Doug Liman’s sci-fi/adventure, Chaos Walking, featuring Tom Holland, Daisy Ridley, Demian Bichir, David Oyelowo, Cynthia Erivo, Nick Jonas and Mads Mikkelsen, took the third spot. The film, based on the young adult novel series of Patrick Ness, earned $3.83 million.

In fourth place was Boogie, the directing debut of Fresh Off the Boat creator Eddie Huang, which grabbed $1.2 million.

Box office experts commented that the reopening of theaters in Manhattan and San Francisco helped Boogie, a coming-of-age drama about a Queens, New York basketball phenomenon, and stars Taylor Takahashi, Pamelyn Chee, and Jorge Lendeborg Jr.

The Croods: A New Age finally dropped to fifth place with $780,000. The moviegoing pandemic season’s success story has now amassed $157.68 million globally.