For a third straight week, American movie "Need for Speed" occupied China's box office with a gross ticket sales of about 372 million Yuan (US$60 million), the China Film News reported.

For the week ending March 30th alone, the American movie, which is a film adaptation of the popular video game series, grossed about US $15 million and is expected to earn further on its fourth week.

Like Us on Facebook

The movie features a street racer, played by Aaron Paul, joining an adrenaline-pumping cross-country race. Experts stated that the movie was very easy to sell to viewers because the "Need for Speed" video game has a huge following since its introduction a few years ago.

Completing the top four movies for this week are the animated film "Mr. Peabody & Sherman" (49.9 million Yuan), Chinese thriller "Black Coal, Thin Ice"; and Hollywood film "The Monuments Men", starred by big Western stars such as George Clooney and Matt Damon.

Chinese movie market, the second largest in the world next to the United States, has been on the radar of foreign movie makers, especially those in Hollywood. For the past few years, Hollywood films have featured Chinese-themes in their movies to make it click in China.

Last year, the gross box office in China reached US $3.6 billion, with domestic movies taking 59 percent share of the entire market. Although the figure is still far from the US $10 billion box office in the US, experts said China's movie market could become the world's largest by 2018.

Seven of the top 10 highest-grossing movies in the country were domestically produced, with the movie "Lost in Thailand" becoming the first local film to hit 1 billion Yuan in the box office.