The Monkey King 3 with a star-studded cast, including Aaron Kwok as the Monkey King and Feng Shaofeng as the monk Tang Seng. [Photo provided to China Daily]

The first Monster Hunt movie earned 2.44 billion yuan in 2015 to become that year's box-office champion, and also made history as it marked the first time that a domestic movie had topped the mainland's box-office charts.

The new film, picking up from where the first one ends, takes off with Wuba, a cute monster king shaped like a white turnip.

The movie, which had a budget of around 700 million yuan, has 1,800 visual-effect shots and new characters played by award-wining Hong Kong veteran Tony Leung as well as singer-actress Li Yuchun.

Raman Hui, the Hong Kong director of the Monster Hunt franchise, says: "I did not expect the first movie to be so successful. And I usually don't think about box-office figures. I believe in making audiences happy."

Raman, who is a Dream-Works Animation veteran, avoids violent or bloody scenes in his films, making Monster Hunt a family-friendly franchise.

The other five holiday films target adults. Leading that pack is director Chen Sicheng's Detective Chinatown 2, which is followed by fantasy epic The Monkey King 3.

Detective Chinatown 2, a Chinese take on Sherlock Holmes, sees the return of amateur detectives played by Wang Baoqiang and Liu Haoran.

And The Monkey King 3, based on the 16th-century novel Journey to the West, is the third installment of Film-Ko Film's franchise about the superhero, who escorts his monk master Tang Seng alongside two fellow apprentices to search for valuable Buddhist scriptures in the remote West.

In the film, Hong Kong star Aaron Kwok reprises his role of Monkey King while Feng Shaofeng again plays the monk. But the major attraction of the movie is actress Zhao Liying, starring as the ruler of an all-women country.