SOURCE / ECONOMY
China's Spring Festival box office second highest-grossing to date
Published: Jan 27, 2023 09:40 PM
Posters of the Chinese science fiction film The Wandering Earth 2. Photo: VCG

Posters of the Chinese science fiction film The Wandering Earth 2. Photo: VCG


China's box office during the Spring Festival holidays (January 21-27, 2023) breached 6.8 billion yuan ($1 billion) as of 21:20 pm on Friday, surpassing 2022's 6.04 billion yuan mark, making this year's Spring Festival holiday the second highest-grossing to date, Chinese ticketing platform Maoyan showed.

This is the first Spring Festival holiday after the adjustment of the country's response to the coronavirus, and the box office is seen as a strong sign of the fast recovery in the movie sector that looks set to shrug off the pandemic-induced ebb. The week-long holiday ends on Friday. The Spring Festival holiday of 2021 had previously been the best season for box office, with 7.82 billion yuan.

Chinese-made blockbusters have led the profits. Ticket sales from famed director Zhang Yimou's historical epic Man Jiang Hong, or Full River Red, ranked first with takings of more than 2.6 billion yuan, accounting for about 41.6 percent of the box office total. The historical drama was followed by science fiction film The Wandering Earth 2 which raked in more than 2.2 billion yuan as of 21:20 pm.

Across China, movie theaters have been thronging with audiences during the festive holidays, with some of them watching two or three movies "to release moviegoers' pent-up desire for high-quality films," the Global Times was told.

"We're very thrilled to see the return of the hustle and bustle, even at midnight. There's no doubt that the box office during the holidays will surpass the 2022 level," a manager of a movie theater in Ningde, East China's Fujian Province, told the Global Times. 

He voiced confidence that the revenue will return to at least 80 percent of the 2021 level soon.

"I watched Man Jiang Hong during the holidays. The cinemas were packed with people," a white-collar worker based in Beijing told the Global Times. "The pre-virus vigor of the Chinese movie industry is back."

Seven films hit the market during the Spring Festival across a diverse range of genres, showing the creativity and high-quality development of China's film industry. 

The overall box office during the Spring Festival is expected to top 8 billion yuan, and is seen as key to the long-term revival of China's film industry, according to a research note issued by Guotai Junan Securities. 

Another report issued by Wanlian Securities predicted that revenues may hit 9 billion yuan, fueled by the three-fold effect of the COVID response optimization, a slight drop in ticket prices, and popular films drawing moviegoers back to theaters.

Global Times