Film Industry Rebounds
The COVID-19 pandemic has deeply impacted the global film industry in 2020, a year that should have witnessed worldwide celebration of the 125th anniversary of the birth of this industry. The Chinese mainland is no exception. The first half of 2020 saw the darkest period in its history, with a box office revenue dropping by 92.8 percent year on year. But things looked up in the second half of the year.
After 178 days’ halt in film production and screening, the Chinese mainland reopened its cinemas on July 20, 2020, thanks to effective measures taken in China that had put the novel coronavirus under control. Starting with some low-investment films, many cinemas soon screened domestically made blockbusters, such as The Eight Hundred, Vanguard and Legend of Deification.
Clearly the pandemic negatively impacted China’s film development by slowing down film production; but it has also brought opportunities to the industry. Because of the COVID19 lockdown, fewer people went out to shoot films, but more people could sit down to review film development in the past and write more high-quality scripts. The pandemic lockdown has therefore been good preparation for a new wave of high-quality film production.
The new wave of films produced after the COVID-19 outbreak in China was warmly embraced by audiences. During the eight-day National Day holiday starting from October 1, which is regarded as one of the prime periods for box office revenue in China, nearly 100 million people went into cinemas. Their enthusiasm for watching films was also “locked down” for months during the epidemic outbreak, and could be fully released. During the eight days, the box office reached 3.95 billion yuan ($606 million). This is the second-highest box office during National Day holiday in history.
The film industry is the litmus test for a country’s economic recovery from COVID-19 pandemic. On the one hand, more people coming into cinemas means that they released the fear brought by about by COVID-19, and thus can be fully relaxed and enjoy themselves; on the other hand, the increase of box office revenue will attract more investors to invest in the film industry, contributing to the economic recovery after the pandemic.
China’s film industry has weathered its own cold winter and is embracing a warm spring. It is taking the lead in contributing to China’s economic recovery. Though the figures for box office takings in the fourth quarter of 2020 had not yet been released at the time of writing, insiders are quite optimistic and believe it will recover. They expect that the box office in 2020 will eventually exceed 20 billion yuan ($3.1 billion). CA