A scene from Goodbye Mr Loser

On Wednesday, the coming-of-age comedy was being shown on nearly 30 percent of all screens in the country's 5,800 cinemas, and had generated 48 percent of the box office takings. It had debuted with 12 percent of all screens.

With takings of 518 million yuan after eight days, Goodbye could become the unexpected star of the National Day holiday period.

Many critics attributed its rise to word-of-mouth marketing by moviegoers who saw the movie in the first few days.

The movie is an adaptation of a namesake stage play.

Goodbye scores a high 8.4 out of 10 on Douban.com, the country's most populous online film review platform. In comparison, Lost scores 6.3 and Chronicle gets 4.8.

"I was surprised, shocked and delighted to see a quality comedy such as Goodbye though the director and actors are all strange names to me," novelist Han Han told his 42 million followers on Sina Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter.

The three Chinese blockbusters have seen a comparatively weak challenge from the latest Hollywood offering, Pixar's fantasy animated film Inside Out.

The Hollywood movie could only manage the fourth spot with a total box-office collection of 40 million yuan. It was released on the Chinese mainland on Tuesday, nearly four months after its North American premiere.

Says Xu, the director and lead actor of Lost in Hong Kong: "If Chinese movies are tailored for homeland viewers I believe we can beat our Hollywood rivals."

Critics have said that the makers of Lost and Goodbye have featured themes like the middle-age crisis, the nostalgia of youth and "first love" to win over local moviegoers.

Meanwhile, moviemakers, especially those behind comedies, are switching their promotional efforts to second-and third-tier cities, which are seeing a rapid rise in the number of moviegoers.