'Ip Man 4: The Finale' becomes third highest grossing Chinese film at North American box office in five years

Chinese martial arts film "Ip Man 4: The Finale" grossed more than US$310,000 in its third weekend in North America with a 19-day total of US$3.49 million through Sunday, making it the third highest grossing Chinese film at the North American box office in recent five years.

According to the studio figures released on Monday by US analytics firm Comscore, the latest installment in the Chinese martial arts film franchise Ip Man brought in US$316,437 from 119 locations with a modest per-theater average of US$2,659, ranking 25th among 79 films on the North American weekend box office chart.

"Ip Man 4: The Finale" passed 2016's fantasy film "The Mermaid" which grossed US$3.24 million in North America to become the third highest grossing Chinese film at the North American box office in recent five years, only behind sci-fi blockbuster "The Wandering Earth" and animated hit "Ne Zha" which took in US$5.87 million and US$3.67 million last year in North America, respectively.

"Ip Man 4: The Finale" was released by Well Go USA Entertainment in Chinese and English with English and Chinese subtitles in select North American cities including Sacramento, New York and San Francisco.

Directed by Wilson Yip, the new film sees Donnie Yen reprising the title role as the legendary Wing Chun kung fu master. In the film, following the death of his wife, Ip Man travels to the United States in order to ease the tensions between the local kung fu masters and his star student, Bruce Lee, and gets involved in a dispute between local armed forces and a Chinese martial arts school in San Francisco's Chinatown.

The US review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes gives "Ip Man 4: The Finale" a score of 92 percent based on 24 critics' reviews and 3,397 Internet Movie Database (IMDb) users have given a weighted average vote of 7.5 out of 10 for the film to date.