The fantasy comedy Mermaid, directed by Stephen Chow (second left), has topped the box-office charts during the Spring Festival holiday.[Photo by Jiang Dong/China Daily]

Meanwhile, industry sources see the current box-office bonanza continuing for the next few weeks, mainly driven by Mermaid.

They make their predictions on the basis that it typically takes a blockbuster around one month or more to generate returns and that it has just been around 10 days since the fantasy comedy was released.

The insiders feel that Mermaid will overtake Monster Hunt to top China's box office charts.

The live-action animated movie Monster Hunt, which ran in cinemas for 63 days, grossed 2.4 billion yuan last summer.

As film critic Yang Wenshan puts it: "The issue is not whether Mermaid will beat Monster Hunt－as it seems very likely that this will happen－but whether a Chinese-language movie can cross 3 billion yuan."

China's booming movie market last year brought in 44.1 billion yuan, a 48 percent rise year-on-year, and has drawn scores of Internet and financial moguls to the business.

The powerful newcomers are the major push behind the current box-office bonanza, says Zhuang Yuxin, a literature professor with Beijing Film Academy.

But sounding a note of caution, Zhuang, also an industry observer, say some unsavory practices are harming the market, such as some cinemas cheating on ticket sales.