On 29 January, coinciding with the first day of the Year of the Snake, the hashtag “box office” (#票房#) shot to the top of the Hot Search list on Weibo, China’s Twitter equivalent, with 100 million views in 24 hours. The reason is that after a year of low cinema box office revenue, the Chinese New Year (CNY) broke the record of the highest daily box office results to reach 1.805 billion RMB (251.68 million USD) across China.
It also broke the record for cinemagoers in one day with 35.17 million people. The CNY season for cinemas is from 28 January to 4 February. By 30 January, the total box office revenue in China reached 4 billion RMB (557.75 million USD). As of that date, the box office number for this period (including preorders) was 3.7 billion RMB (510.23 million USD).
The CNY film tickets started receiving preorders on 20 January and reached 10 million in sales in just 40 minutes, breaking the record. 5 of the 6 films during the season are sequels from established IPs, and the other was Legends of the Condor Heroes: The Gallants, based on one of the most popular wuxia IPs, Legends of the Condor Heroes, a novel by Jin Yong. Two films reached over 400 million RMB (55 million USD) at the box office on CNY day, the same as last year. But five reached over 100 million (13.94 million USD) and four over 2 million RMB (275,800 USD), more than the 4 and 3 films last year, respectively. Ticket prices are also slightly higher this year.
Without hyperbole, 2024 was a bad year for cinema, the box office revenue for the whole year was 42.5 billion RMB (5.93 billion USD). Not only was it down 12.4 billion RMB (1.73 billion USD) from 2023, a 22.6% decrease, but it was lower than in 2015. The 6 IP-driven films this CNY give hope to the cinema sector, but pundits believe that IPs and star effects will not sustain the market, only good reviews and word-of-mouth, i.e. better films, can.
