Cast members of Dragon Blade starring Jackie Chan.[Photo by Jiang Dong/China Daily]

This Lunar New Year, Chinese movies earned 1.73 billion yuan, making it the most successful 'golden period' for mainland theaters, Xu Fan reports.

The just-ended Lunar New Year holidays proved a roaring success for China's box office as it recorded a new high with several local films possibly earning more than Western blockbusters half a world away.

The country's top regulator for the sector said that box-office revenues from Feb 19 to 24 touched 1.73 billion yuan ($280 million), 36 percent up from the same period last year, according to Xinhua News Agency.

The action thriller Dragon Blade starring Jackie Chan and directed by Hong Kong filmmaker Daniel Lee led the way with 451 million yuan, followed by the casino-themed comedy The Man From Macau II in 3D that earned 416 million yuan and French director Jean-Jacques Annaud's Wolf Totem at 297 million yuan, Box Office Bar, a major Chinese online box-office tracker, said on Wednesday.

In comparison, Fifty Shades of Grey, an erotic romance between billionaire Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan) and college graduate Anastasia Steele (Dakota Johnson), topped the North American box office with $22.3 million (139.6 million yuan), in the weekend ending on Feb 22, foreign media reported.

British spy comedy, Kingsman: The Secret Service, was second with $18.3 million (114.6 million yuan) and The Sponge Bob Movie: Sponge Out of Water followed with $16.6 million (103.9 million yuan).