#KungFuSoccer is Stephen Chow’s 2026 Chinese sports comedy — a Shaolin Soccer spin-off and his first film in seven years — that opened to a US$73.6 million weekend on 11 July 2026, taking roughly three-quarters of all Chinese box-office receipts that weekend and reframing his 2001 formula around an all-women’s football team. It is the biggest Chinese-market opening of the summer and the anchor of a domestic box-office revival, arriving 25 years to the summer after Chow’s original Shaolin Soccer launched him internationally.
Quick Facts
- Director / writer: Stephen Chow (does not appear on screen; retired from acting after CJ7, 2008)
- Mainland China release: 11 July 2026
- Hong Kong release: 13 August 2026
- Opening weekend: US$73.6M in China (US$38.3M on Day 1), No. 1 by a factor of ~9x
- Market share: ~75% of the Chinese box office over its opening weekend
- Cast: Zhang Xiaofei, Dilraba Dilmurat, Lay Zhang, with Carina Lau, Takeru Satoh, Jimmy O. Yang, MC Jin, Louis Cheung and PRC women’s national team GK Zhao Lina
The Film
The premise is a direct evolution of Shaolin Soccer: a team of martial-arts adepts channels their kung fu into a football tournament, competing here as the underdog Emei side in the fictional “Supreme Invincible Cup.” The most significant shift is gender — the on-screen team is entirely female, and the film explicitly foregrounds women’s football at a moment when China’s own women’s national team remains one of the country’s most consistently competitive sports institutions.
Commercial Success
The opening figure — US$73.6 million over three days, US$38.3M on day one — makes Kung Fu Soccer the year’s biggest Chinese-market debut and one of the largest Chow openings of his career. Its opening-weekend share of the Chinese market approached 75%, and its nearest competitor took roughly one-ninth as much. Multiple trade outlets (Variety, Hollywood Reporter, Deadline) placed the projected final Chinese total north of US$350 million, and a Variety report confirmed the film had already closed international rights across multiple territories including a planned US release.
Industry Impact
The result is a meaningful data point for China’s box-office recovery. China’s 2026 summer box office topped ¥3 billion (~$440M) with Kung Fu Soccer the largest single contributor, and its performance ended a run of increasingly muted commercial responses to legacy Chinese comedy IP. It also revives the Shaolin Soccer franchise 25 years after the original — Chow’s biggest international breakout — and demonstrates that his brand still translates commercially even without him on screen.
Controversies
The film drew backlash in South Korea, where SBS and The Korea Times reported that critics accused the film of degrading a Korean women’s football team in one of its match sequences. The controversy became one of the film’s dominant news pegs in East Asia during its opening week and is expected to shape how the film is marketed outside China as its worldwide distribution rolls out.
Legacy
Kung Fu Soccer is likely to be remembered as the moment Stephen Chow re-entered the global film conversation after a seven-year hiatus and as the film that quantitatively proved that a legacy Chinese comedy franchise could still open like an event picture. Whether the film sustains its projected $350M+ Chinese run — and how it plays internationally — will determine whether it re-opens Shaolin Soccer as a full franchise or stands as a one-off nostalgia moment.
Sources
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kung_Fu_Soccer_(film)
- https://deadline.com/2026/07/stephen-chow-kung-fu-soccer-opening-china-box-office-1236980601/
- https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/stephen-chow-kung-fu-soccer-china-box-office-1236646255/
- https://variety.com/2026/film/box-office/china-box-office-kung-fu-soccer-73-million-opening-1236809349/
- https://www.screendaily.com/news/stephen-chows-kung-fu-soccer-sets-mainland-china-release-25-years-after-shaolin-soccer/5218357.article
- https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/entertainment/films/20260718/chinese-film-kung-fu-soccer-sparks-backlash-over-portrayal-of-korean-womens-football-team
- https://news.cgtn.com/news/2026-07-14/China-s-box-office-tops-3-billion-yuan-as-summer-season-heats-up-1OLSmOfJc9q/p.html