Cliff Walkers. Photo: VCG

Zhang Yimou's first spy-genre film Cliff Walkers passed youth romance film My Love at the daily box office on Monday during China's May Day holiday due to good word of mouth. Chinese film analysts chalk the success up to Chinese audience's higher demand for a film's quality.

According to a report Chinese ticketing platform Maoyan released on Thursday, the May Day holiday box office in the Chinese mainland had reached a new high at 1.67 billion yuan ($258 million) as of Thursday noon, with 44.18 million tickets sold. The top three films were My Love (511 million yuan), Cliff Walkers (504 million yuan) and Home Sweet Home (190 million yuan).

Mu Chen, a data analyst from Alibaba Pictures' ticketing platform Beacon, told the Global Times that romance films has always been popular during the May Day holiday like Finding Mr. Right 2 in 2016 and Us and Them in 2018, which gave My Love an advantage right out the gate. 

The report shows that the biggest demographic for My Love were women 20 to 24 years old. However, audience reviews have not been kind, calling the film's plot "cliché." The film is a remake of South Korean film On Your Wedding Day, which premiered in 2018. Meanwhile, spy-thriller film Cliff Walkers, whose target audience was men, gradually toppled the love romance film with its heart-stopping story.

Currently, My Love only has an 5.2/10 score on Chinese media review platform Douban while Cliff Walkers has a high score of 7.7/10.

"Chinese moviegoers are focusing more on a film's word of mouth, as well as its logic and storytelling. If a film fails to live up to expectations, its box office will slip quickly," Shi Wenxue, a film critic based in Beijing, told the Global Times.

The report also shows that as of Wednesday, Cliff Walkers had grossed 40 million yuan in IMAX, making it the second highest May Day film in China following Avengers: Endgame. The average ticket price this May Day holiday was 37.8 yuan, 5.7 yuan lower than in 2019, when Avengers: Endgame dominated about 80 percent of the holiday box office. 

Although the Chinese mainland May Day box office has set a new record, the box office from January to March has only reached 20.5 billion yuan, 3 billion yuan lower than the same period in 2018 and 2019. The main reason for the decrease was the lack of imported foreign films, while it also shows that the market is becoming more dependent on set film schedules and public holidays. 

Many Chinese film critics told the Global Times that this phenomenon is "not healthy." "It's not a good phenomenon to release so many films all together. High-quality movies should be distributed during the off season to avoid the usual 'no movies to watch' situation in theaters," Liu Zhenfei, a data analyst from Chinese ticketing platform Maoyan, told the Global Times.