Chinese movies make history at the box office
China’s resurgent movie market is encouraging news for filmmakers worldwide
O
ne year ago, more than 70,000 cinema screens in China went dark. Theater managers and filmmakers hoped to survive the chilliest industry winter in decades.
Now, spring is back, because of the country’s effective control of COVID-19.
The Year of the Ox has begun on a good note. With a surge of up to 32 percent over the same period in 2019, the Spring Festival holiday season in 2021 recorded a gain of 7.8 billion yuan ($1.2 billion), propelling February to become the highest-grossing single month of all time in the world, according to movie-information tracker Beacon.
“China’s massive box-office numbers during Spring Festival truly show that the hunger for the cinema experience has not faded but multiplied,” said Matt William Knowles, a US actor who has been cast in such Chinese films as the 2018 fantasy epic, Asura.
The resurgence of the Chinese film market is “an encouragement to filmmakers worldwide as they struggle with changes in their local policies and box offices in their countries”, he said.
Knowles left China more than a year ago after his acting job in a bigbudget Chinese film was interrupted by the outbreak. He now lives in Los Angeles and said he looks forward to returning.
Statistics from the China Film Administration, the country’s top regulator of the sector, shows the boxoffice haul was 15.6 billion yuan in the first two months of the year, with the total number of screens reaching 77,769 — the most in the world. Half of the two-month revenue was earned during the Spring Festival holiday from Feb 11 to 17.
With ups and downs in line with the evolution of commercial films in China, going to cinemas has become a major part of the festival celebrations that traditionally consist of family feasts, setting off fireworks and watching China Central Television’s annual gala, industry insiders said.
Spring Festival this year was different, too. To reduce COVID-19 infection risks, most areas in China encouraged people to stay in their cities of residence instead of traveling to their hometowns.
And many cinemas in China were asked to follow rules, such as operating at 75 percent of seating capacity.
Under the strict pandemic-prevention guidelines, Beijing, for example, capped the maximum seating capacity in cinemas citywide at 50 percent while a temporary closure of cinemas was announced in Harbin, Heilongjiang province, and Shijiazhuang, Hebei province, after local infections were detected. The cinemas in these cities reopened on Feb 23 and March 1, respectively.
With travel plans canceled, many Chinese people felt bored, and going to cinemas became a major source of entertainment, said Zhang Guangbei, a veteran actor and member of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference.
“The film industry in China has undergone remarkable improvements in the past years due to efforts by filmmakers. For most of us, it was inspiring and comforting to see the robust recovery, especially with most of the box-office receipts earned from domestic films,” Zhang said.
Last year, China’s box office grossed a total of 20.4 billion yuan, with nearly 84 percent brought in by domestic films. Nine of this year’s 10 highestgrossing movies are locally produced.
During the first three days of Spring Festival this year, director Chen Sicheng’s film, Detective Chinatown
3, topped the box office, but it was surprisingly knocked down by the comedy Hi, Mom on Feb 15, making the latter the biggest dark horse during the holiday season.
With a stunning box-office haul of nearly 5 billion yuan, Hi, Mom, which is the directorial debut of actress-turned-filmmaker Jia Ling, has helped Jia to become the highestgrossing female director in China.
The movie is dedicated to Jia’s mother, who died in an accident at the age of 48 in 2001.
Through a lighthearted plot that ends with a tear-jerking twist, the film’s protagonist accidentally time travels to the early 1980s to help her then-unmarried mother get a better life.
The film has won wide acclaim, with most audience members saying online that they were touched by the mother-daughter relationship. The film got 8.1 points out of 10 on the popular review site, Douban.
“Young people have become a major group watching films in theaters. Many such viewers in their 20s could not return to their hometowns during this Spring Festival due to the ‘stay-put policy’. Hi, Mom easily resonated with them. It reminded them of their own parents,” said Dong Wenxin, a manager at Jinan Cinema Palace in Shandong province’s capital city.
Respectively occupying the third and sixth slots of the Spring Festival box office, director Lu Yang’s A
Writer’s Odyssey and Light Chaser Animation’s feature New Gods: Nezha
Reborn have received acclaim, especially for creating visual spectacles.
The enduring Chinese animation franchise’s seventh installment,
Boonie Bears: The Wild Life, and Hong Kong star Andy Lau’s crime comedy, Endgame, were respectively the fourth and fifth highest-grossing films in the festival season, followed by the fantasy The Yinyang Master — adapted from a game and featuring computer-generated monsters — in the seventh slot.
“Chinese films set to contend at the box office during Spring Festival are becoming more diverse in terms of genres to satisfy different audiences’ tastes,” said Zhi Feina, a professor at the Film and Television Research Institute of the Chinese National Academy of Arts.
Speaking about the surprising success of Hi, Mom, Zhi said that such heartwarming, low-budget stories about ordinary people can win over audiences with relatable themes, but an “authentic rise” of Chinese cinema will happen when domestic films enter overseas markets that rely on big-budget films.
“China has constructed some of the most advanced cinemas in the world. Besides, China has seen a noticeable improvement in filmmaking technologies, exemplified by visual effects-studded blockbusters, such as The Wandering Earth and A
Writer’s Odyssey,” said Zhi, predicting that big movies will become the mainstay, boosting the domestic film industry.
This year, high ticket prices have stirred controversy online.
A report released by Beacon said the average cost of one ticket reached 60.6 yuan in first-tier cities in 2021, surging 21.69 percent compared to the same Spring Festival period in 2019. The average ticket price rise nationwide is around 9 percent.
Considering increased expenses for cinemas, such as hiring more employees for disinfection measures, as well as the market’s supply-and-demand tension, partly caused by the seating capacity as well as the rise of ticketing platforms’ fees, Zhi said she believes the increase is within a reasonable range.
“Most cinemas have struggled to survive over the year,” she noted.
“China’s recovery as the first major movie market has encouraged the world.”