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The Rock continues to rule over Chinese box office

China's film industry is all abuzz this week as Hollywood icon Keanu Reeves has his cameras rolling in Beijing to start shooting on Man of Tai Chi, the American's first try at directing.

But Chinese's audiences are more concerned with a star of an entirely different variety as one-time wrestler Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson continues to make an unlikely box office champ of himself.

Johnson's latest family-friendly actioner, Journey 2: The Mysterious Island, picked up a further 65.5 million yuan (7.8 million euros) over the past week to now have 295 million yuan (35 million euros) in its coffers after 17 days on release.

There was a resurgence over the past week for Tom Cruise and Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, with a further 44.5 million yuan (5.3 million euros) in ticket sales bringing its takings over 30 days to an impressive 605 million yuan (72 million euros).

The main debut was made by those little cartoon penguins in Happy Feet 2 and they danced their way to a first-week's takings of 33.6 million yuan million (four million euros), according to China's Ent Group.

In Japan, meanwhile, American heartthrob Justin Timberlake has been all the rage over the past week as his latest thriller, the Andrew Niccol-directed In Time, held on to its position at the top of the charts.

In Time returned receipts of just over US$3 million (2.5 million euros), according to Box Office Mojo, for a two-week total now of just on US$11.5 million (8.6 million euros).

Surprisingly, given its success elsewhere, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1 fell flat on debut in Japan, with a return of just over US$1 million (750,000 euros).

South Korea saw a neck-and-neck tussle for attention between the thrillers Nameless Gangster and Howling with the former just edging out its rival to reclaim the top spot with 353,000 admissions. Nameless Gangster has now sold just under four million tickets as has been the most successful film in South Korea so far this year, according to Han Cinema.

Howling was safe in second with 1.2 million admissions in two weeks, while all eyes this week will be on the romance played out between two of Korea's tops stars -- Ha Jeong-woo and Kong Hyo-jin -- as their film Love Fiction goes on wide release.

See the trailer ...
Love Fiction (Korean only): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Doq0a15P_mo

MS