We already knew ‘The Forbidden Kingdom’ was doing well in Asia during its opening weekend, but it’s now beating every expectation in China. With its $75 million budget it wasn’t expected to need the Asian audience and it wasn’t targeting it either. The story is written for the Western audience and a Hong Kong magazine even described it as ‘unbelievably weird.’ But the people in China are loving it, bringing in $21.4 million in 10 days. This makes China the second highest grossing territory for the film, followed by South Korea with a little under $6 million.

‘Iron Man,’ there he is again, started pushing ‘The Forbidden Kingdom’ out of US theaters this weekend. And with a domestic gross of just $45 million, Weinstein can’t be too happy. It causes them to need the unexpected Asian audience. With currently $69 million worldwide, it didn’t manage to top its budget yet and that’s without considering the marketing.

Isaiah Washington is getting ready for his first big role since Grey’s Anatomy. After the major fight with T.R. Knight and ABC last year, he said to “spend the summer pursuing charity work in Sierra Leone, work on an independent film and avoid worrying about the show.” And now he has finally scored his next role in the movie ‘Patriots.’

The project starts shooting this week in New Orleans and also stars Forest Whitaker. It’s a ‘based on a true story’ movie about high school basketball and is produced by Weinstein.

With its $30 million budget ‘Forgetting Sarah Marshall’ was expected to be an easy sell, but the comedy is now expected to do anywhere between $10-$30 million this weekend. The movie is produced by Judd Apatow, responsible for the failure of ‘Drillbit Taylor’, but also for the success of ‘Superbad’ and ‘Knocked up’.

The ‘crude comedy’ has to battle ‘The Forbidden Kingdom,’ with Jackie Chan and Jet Li, which is expected to have a good opening as well. Produced by Weinstein’s Asian branch, ‘The Forbidden Kingdom’ is opening in 3,151 theaters, while ‘Forgetting Sarah Marshall’ will only do 2,798. That’s already a 12.5% bigger chance for a better opening by the Asian guys.