Weekend in Taipei Budget

What Is the Budget of Weekend in Taipei?

No production budget has ever been published for Weekend in Taipei (2024). EuropaCorp, which produced and distributed the film, never disclosed one, and no trade outlet that covered the release carried a figure.

Two numbers do circulate, and they are three times apart. The Movie Database and IMDb both list $30,000,000, neither sourced. Against that, Taipei city councillor Chen Chung-wen told Liberty Times in January 2025 that the production cost about US$10,000,000, a remark made while criticising the value the city got from its filming-assistance programme rather than a studio disclosure. Neither is a reliable budget, and publishing either one as the figure would mean building a net return and a return on investment on top of a guess.

What is documented is the shape of the production. Weekend in Taipei is a 101 minute action thriller, a France and Taiwan co-production produced and distributed by EuropaCorp with support from the Taipei Film Commission, shot entirely on location in and around Taipei between 3 July and 29 August 2023. Luc Besson and Virginie Besson-Silla produced, Besson co-wrote with director George Huang, and the cast is led by Luke Evans, Gwei Lun-mei and Sung Kang. Against that, the film grossed $2,994,328 worldwide.

Key Budget Allocation Categories

With no disclosed budget there is no allocation table to reproduce. What the production record does show is where an action film shot entirely in one city concentrates its money, and Weekend in Taipei is unusually well documented on that front because so much of it ran through Taipei's public filming-assistance system:

• Location Access and Road Closures: The production filed twelve road closure applications, including shutting the Ziqiang Tunnel to stage a car crash, making it the most road-closure-intensive film in Taiwan's history. Liberty Times reported a total of 99 filming-assistance items handled by the city. Closures on that scale carry police coordination, traffic management and permitting costs that a studio backlot or a controlled set would not incur.
• Vehicle and Chase Work: The film's largest set pieces are vehicular. A car chase was shot at Dawulun Beach and the Aodi Fishing Harbor in Keelung on 25 July 2023, and the Ziqiang Tunnel closure existed to stage a crash. Picture cars, stunt drivers, rigging and repeat takes on live roads are the line items that scale fastest on a film built this way.
• Above-the-Line Cast: Luke Evans leads as DEA agent John Lawlor, with Gwei Lun-mei as mercenary driver Joey and Sung Kang as the trafficker Kwang. Three internationally recognisable leads on a single-city shoot is where an independently financed action picture typically concentrates its above-the-line spend.
• A Hotel as Production Base and Standing Set: Most interiors were filmed at the Marriott Taipei, which also housed the foreign cast and crew for the duration of the shoot. The hotel doubled as a business tower and as the characters' homes and offices. Using one building as accommodation, base camp and multiple standing sets removes construction, company moves and separate location fees at once, and it is the single clearest cost decision visible in the production record.
• Local Crew: The entire filming crew was composed of Taiwanese filmmakers. Crewing a foreign-financed production locally rather than travelling a unit is a direct saving on per diems, travel and accommodation, and it was central to the case the production made for city support.
• Writing and Producing: Luc Besson co-wrote the screenplay with George Huang and produced alongside Virginie Besson-Silla, a structure that keeps development and producing fees inside EuropaCorp rather than buying them on the open market.

One critic read the result as constrained. James Marsh of the South China Morning Post attributed the film's look to either "budgetary constraints or simply a lack of creativity", and judged that it did not deliver the aesthetics normally associated with Besson's productions. That is a critical opinion rather than a financial source, but it is the closest anything in the published record comes to characterising the scale of the spend.

How Does Weekend in Taipei's Budget Compare to Similar Films?

Without a budget figure, the honest comparison is on outcome rather than on cost. Set against the EuropaCorp and Luc Besson slate that Weekend in Taipei belongs to, the $2,994,328 worldwide gross is the lowest of the group by a wide margin, and the gap is not close enough to be explained by budget differences alone:

• Lucy (2014): Budget $40,000,000 | Worldwide $469,058,574. The direct ancestor of this production. Besson and Besson-Silla shot part of Lucy in Taiwan in 2013, were impressed by the cityscape and said they would return, which is why Besson steered Huang's project from Hong Kong to Taipei. It is also the high-water mark for the company, and Weekend in Taipei grossed roughly 0.6% of it.
• Anna (2019): Budget $34,000,000 | Worldwide $31,626,978. The closest structural comparison: a Besson-written action thriller built around a female lead who drives the action, released late in EuropaCorp's run and unable to recover its production cost theatrically. Anna still out-grossed Weekend in Taipei more than tenfold.
• The Transporter (2002): Budget $21,000,000 | Worldwide $43,712,375. The template for the company's export model, a compact action picture with a driver at the centre, shot in a single distinctive region. It shows what the same formula returned when it worked, and it launched a franchise from a budget in the low twenties.
• Lockout (2012): Budget $20,000,000 | Worldwide $32,948,113. A Besson-originated genre film at the modest end of the EuropaCorp range. Even at that scale it grossed eleven times what Weekend in Taipei did, which suggests the shortfall here is a distribution and awareness problem rather than a question of production scale.
• Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017): Budget $180,000,000 | Worldwide $215,098,356. The film that broke EuropaCorp's finances and pushed the company toward restructuring. It is the reason a 2024 EuropaCorp release arrives without the theatrical infrastructure the company once had, and it is essential context for why this film reached North America through an acquisition rather than a studio release.

Weekend in Taipei Box Office Performance

The film opened strongest where it was made. Released in Taiwan and France on 25 September 2024 after a world premiere at Vieshow Cinemas Xinyi in Taipei on 1 September, it took the number one position in Taiwan in its opening week, then fell to fifth in its second week with NT$6.68 million, about US$206,000, for a running local total of NT$40.58 million, roughly US$1.25 million. France returned $806,854 and the United Arab Emirates $615,710, the two largest tracked territories. Ketchup Entertainment opened it wide in North America on 8 November 2024 across just over a thousand theatres, where it took $380,057 in its first weekend; Deadline, reporting roughly $360,000 from 1,021 theatres, called the figures "lackluster".

The split is heavily international: $608,034 domestic against $2,386,294 from overseas, so North America accounts for about 20% of the tracked total. One caveat matters for anyone reading that worldwide number. The tracked worldwide total includes no Taiwan figure at all, despite Taiwan being where it opened at number one and where local reporting put the cume at roughly US$1.25 million. The true global figure is therefore meaningfully higher than $2,994,328, which is the tracked total rather than a complete one.

There is no return per dollar figure for Weekend in Taipei, because there is no published budget to compute one from. Net return, total investment and return on investment are undefined here rather than zero. What can be said without any of that is that a film with three international leads, a wide North American release and a full city's filming apparatus behind it finished its theatrical run under $3,000,000.

Weekend in Taipei Production History

The film began with a location rather than a script. Luc Besson and Virginie Besson-Silla shot part of Lucy in Taiwan in 2013, were struck by the cityscape and said at the time that they would come back for another project. That intention sat dormant for nearly a decade.

In 2022 the Taiwanese-American director George Huang conceived a film about a female mercenary driver set in Asia and took it to Besson to develop. It was originally set in Hong Kong, but the project became unavailable there after shifts in funding, and Besson proposed moving it to Taipei. In February 2023 Huang and the Bessons travelled to Taipei to scout locations, joined by director Olivier Megaton. Besson then co-wrote the screenplay with Huang.

Principal photography began on 3 July 2023 in Taipei and wrapped on 29 August, a shorter run than the three months originally planned. The crew was entirely Taiwanese. Daniel Wu and Janet Hsieh were spotted with the cast in the Neihu District on 15 July; the unit moved to Keelung on 25 July for a car chase at Dawulun Beach and the Aodi Fishing Harbor; filming took place at the Grand Victoria Hotel in Zhongshan District on 11 August, and on American Street in Ximending on 22 August, with Besson and Sung Kang seen on set. Further scenes were shot in the Datong and Daan Districts. The production filed twelve road closure applications, including one to shut the Ziqiang Tunnel for a car crash, the most of any film in Taiwan's history, and based most of its interiors at the Marriott Taipei.

Casting Sung Kang as Kwang put him on the opposite side of an action film from the role he is known for. Kang originated Han Lue in Justin Lin's Sundance breakout Better Luck Tomorrow (2002) and carried the character into the Fast and Furious franchise, and he spent the following years across the Asian-American independent films that grew out of that circle: The Motel (2005), Lin's Finishing the Game (2007), and Snakehead (2021). By the time he played a trafficking billionaire in Taipei he had already directed his first feature, Shaky Shivers (2022), and he would go on to write, direct and star in Drifter (2026).

Ketchup Entertainment acquired North American distribution rights in March 2024, six months before the premiere. An official trailer followed in August, revealing Patrick Lee in the cast. EuropaCorp handled France and Cai Chang Asia handled Taiwan.

Awards and Recognition

Weekend in Taipei has not received any awards or nominations. It premiered out of competition at Vieshow Cinemas Xinyi in Taipei on 1 September 2024 rather than at a festival, and no jury prize, guild nomination or industry award has been reported for the film or for any of its cast and crew.

The one distinction on record is commercial and local: the film opened at number one in Taiwan in its first week of release, and the production holds the record for the most road closure applications filed by any film in Taiwan's history, at twelve. Because Ketchup Entertainment's North American release was not polled, there is no CinemaScore grade for the film either.

Critical Reception

Reviews were mixed and thin on the ground. Rotten Tomatoes holds the film at 52% from 23 critic reviews, with a critics consensus reading: "A glossy but thoroughly derivative action film, Weekend in Taipei squanders its slick set pieces on a cliche-ridden script and stiff storytelling that rarely rises above disposable entertainment." The audience Popcornmeter sits higher at 69%. Metacritic has never issued a Metascore, because only two reviews were ever logged there against a four-review minimum, scoring 63 from RogerEbert.com and 60 from Screen Rant.

Dennis Harvey of Variety called it a "familiar, formulaic but fun action-thriller", a throwback to boilerplate action pictures with energetic chase scenes and a light tone that ultimately lacked depth and memorability. Christy Lemire of RogerEbert.com gave it 2.5 out of 4, describing it as a "B-movie straight out of the 1990s" with "solid" and "over-the-top" action, while criticising dialogue she called "hilariously stupid" and a lack of character development that left the film forgettable.

The harshest notice came from the region it was shot in. James Marsh of the South China Morning Post gave it 2 out of 5, praising Gwei Lun-mei's "captivating" performance and the volume of action but finding the film "repeatedly bogged down by unnecessary backstory and exposition". Estella Huang of Mirror Media called it a "Hollywood-level action film" that showcases Taipei's cityscape while flattening its romantic and familial threads into basic dialogue and set pieces, and Berton Hsu, writing for The News Lens, read it as a commercially driven popcorn film that lacks authenticity and misrepresents Taiwan behind a convoluted plot.

The most positive review came from Mae Abdulbaki of Screen Rant, who called the film "charming, well-shot, thrilling, and, above all, entertaining", crediting a "game cast", the action sequences and a "surprising amount of humor" for an engaging watch even where the characters lacked depth.