BEIJING, Aug. 23 (Xinhua) -- The war epic film "The Eight Hundred" scored a cumulative box office revenue of more than 700 million yuan (about 100 million U.S. dollars) in China by Sunday afternoon.

This came after Saturday saw the film gross over 200 million yuan, a record high of daily box office sales so far in 2020 by any film, according to the film's Weibo account.

Driven by the sales of "The Eight Hundred," which was formally released Friday, daily China box office sales continued to rise and hit 230 million yuan Saturday, a new high since movie theaters reopened a month ago following months of closure due to COVID-19.

As of 4:30 p.m. Sunday, moviegoers who had watched the movie in China totaled more than 18 million, showed data compiled by Maoyan, a movie-ticketing and film data platform.

Maoyan has upgraded its forecast for the film's total China box office sales to 1.98 billion yuan, up from 1.67 billion yuan in an estimation made Saturday.

Directed by Guan Hu, "The Eight Hundred" shows Chinese soldiers defending a warehouse against the invading Japanese army during the Battle of Shanghai in 1937.

Shot entirely with IMAX cameras, it is the first major Chinese film to hit movie theaters since the COVID-19 outbreak.

Yin Hong, vice chairman of the China Film Association and a professor at Tsinghua University, has hailed "The Eight Hundred" as a movie that "Chinese filmmakers should be proud of."

It marked a new height for Chinese war films, or even Chinese films, following the 2007 Feng Xiaogang film "Assembly," he said.

Overseas, it is slated for release in North America, Australia, and New Zealand on Aug. 28, according to CMC Pictures, a distributor of the film.