Box office revenue swells on first day of Lunar New Year
BEIJING: When it comes to box office receipts, The Year of the Dog appears to be barking up the right tree.
All over China, movie ticket sales on the first day of the Lunar New Year swelled by nearly 66 per cent to 1.32 billion yuan (RM832 million) compared with the same day of the holiday a year ago. Analysts say that signals another howling year ahead for the Chinese film industry.
Real-time ticket sales, including service charges for moviegoers who bought tickets online, surged above 900 million yuan around midday last Friday. That exceeded the 802 million yuan in box office sales on the first day of the lunar new year in 2017, according to Maoyan.com, a Chinese box office tracking service provider.
Ticket sales for the sevenday holiday are expected to handily beat the 3.3 billion yuan recorded during the previous holiday season due to rave reviews for several new big-budget productions, some industry analysts said.
Several Chinese-made productions are dominating domestic screens, including the second
instalments of Monster Hunt and Detective Chinatown and the third instalment of Monkey King.
Monster Hunt 2, a 3D film wrapping in fantasy, action, comedy and adventure, took in in 555.5 million yuan last Friday, making it the highest-grossing film of the day, according to Maoyan.
The Detective Chinatown 2, a wacky adventure comedy set in New York’s Chinatown, came in second place, with 342.9 million yuan in one-day ticket sales last Friday, followed by Monkey King 3, the latest franchise adapted from the Chinese classic “Journey to the West,” which raked in 168.3 million yuan the same day.
Operation Red Sea, a patriotic action film on the evacuation of hundreds of Chinese nationals and foreigners from Yemen’s southern port of Aden during the civil war in Yemen 2015, took in 127.8 million yuan in box office sales.
Operation Red Sea and Detective Chinatown 2 received 9.6 and 9.3 out of 10, respectively, in viewer’s ratings on Maoyan. Monster Hunt 2 was given a 8.5 out of 10 by moviegoers on Maoyan, while Monkey King 3 received a 7.7.
Boonie Bear: The Big Shrink, the only animation featured in the top five films of the day, received a 9.2 rating and grossed 75.5 million yuan.
In all of 2017, movie ticket sales reached 55.9 billion yuan, an increase of 13 per cent over the previous year.