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China’s box office breaks world records
By Du Yifei from People’s Daily
Poster of film “Operation Red Sea” (File photo)
Box office sales in China exceeded over 10 billion yuan ( $1.58 billion) in February, refreshing previous world record for the highest monthly box office sales in a single market of $1.39 billion set by the North American market in July 2011.
The previous single-month box office record in the Chinese mainland was 7.37 billion yuan.
New world records were set during the Spring Festival holiday week, including the box office of a single market in a single day, the number of single-day viewers and weekend box office.
A total of 5.723 billion yuan box office sales were recorded, to which domestic films contributed 99.66 percent. The number of viewers reached 140 million, indicating that one in 10 Chinese went to the cinema during the seven-day-long festival.
The impressive box office can be attributed to high-quality movies as well as the growing number of Chinese consumers who prefer watching films as entertainment during the Spring Festival holiday.
Chinese audiences gave a record high of 83.4 scores to the movies screened during the holiday to express their satisfaction.
Military blockbuster “Operation Red Sea”, which is loosely based on an evacuation of Chinese citizens and foreign nationals during the 2015 Yemeni Civil War, is comparable to a Hollywood movie in its film-making and storytelling.
The movie presents China’s sense of responsibility in international affairs and triggers the strong national pride among the Chinese. Climbing box office of the movie once again manifests the inexorable law that “content is king”.
Industry insiders believe the explosive growth of the Chinese film market not only benefits from China’s rapid economic development and demographic dividends, but also from a favorable film industry law.
The law, coming into force on March 1, 2017, incorporates development of the film industry into the plan for national economic and social development, providing the fundamental legal basis for prosperity and development of China’s film industry.
China has 9,914 cinemas and 53,824 movie screens, and the annual box office revenue exceeds 50 billion yuan. The size of China’s film market now ranks the world’s second and the number of movie screens tops the world.
The Chinese film market is expected to be the world’s largest by 2020, and China is likely to become a new world film production center after the Hollywood, said Zhang Hongsen, deputy director of China’s State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television.
Zhang believes that China will become more attractive to global film resources and make more contributions to cultural diversity of world films.
The previous single-month box office record in the Chinese mainland was 7.37 billion yuan.
New world records were set during the Spring Festival holiday week, including the box office of a single market in a single day, the number of single-day viewers and weekend box office.
A total of 5.723 billion yuan box office sales were recorded, to which domestic films contributed 99.66 percent. The number of viewers reached 140 million, indicating that one in 10 Chinese went to the cinema during the seven-day-long festival.
The impressive box office can be attributed to high-quality movies as well as the growing number of Chinese consumers who prefer watching films as entertainment during the Spring Festival holiday.
Chinese audiences gave a record high of 83.4 scores to the movies screened during the holiday to express their satisfaction.
Military blockbuster “Operation Red Sea”, which is loosely based on an evacuation of Chinese citizens and foreign nationals during the 2015 Yemeni Civil War, is comparable to a Hollywood movie in its film-making and storytelling.
The movie presents China’s sense of responsibility in international affairs and triggers the strong national pride among the Chinese. Climbing box office of the movie once again manifests the inexorable law that “content is king”.
Industry insiders believe the explosive growth of the Chinese film market not only benefits from China’s rapid economic development and demographic dividends, but also from a favorable film industry law.
The law, coming into force on March 1, 2017, incorporates development of the film industry into the plan for national economic and social development, providing the fundamental legal basis for prosperity and development of China’s film industry.
China has 9,914 cinemas and 53,824 movie screens, and the annual box office revenue exceeds 50 billion yuan. The size of China’s film market now ranks the world’s second and the number of movie screens tops the world.
The Chinese film market is expected to be the world’s largest by 2020, and China is likely to become a new world film production center after the Hollywood, said Zhang Hongsen, deputy director of China’s State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television.
Zhang believes that China will become more attractive to global film resources and make more contributions to cultural diversity of world films.
