The slow recovery of the box office across Asian is expected to accelerate over the next 12 months, according to Melvin Ang, executive chairman of Singapore-based media company mm2 Asia.
A marked shift in audience viewing habits and a backlog of titles are among the reasons box office figures for 2023 remained below pre-pandemic levels. However, “true recovery is just around the corner,” said Ang, which spans production, distribution and exhibition.
“Almost all businesses have recovered post-Covid but the cinema business is very unique,” the executive told Screen at Filmart in Hong Kong. “Without strong content, the cinema is as good as a shell. Through the Covid years, people got used to staying at home and creative talent produced good content for streaming. This made the quality gap between streaming content and feature films very small and people chose not to go to the cinema.
“But while there has been a delay, just look at the recent months and I think we’re looking at a true recovery in 2025. We just need to be a little bit more patient.”
In Japan, cinema admissions in 2023 were 2.3% up year-on-year but remained 20% down on 2019, while local hits in South Korea pushed its admissions up 11% but saw 45% fewer cinemagoers than pre-Covid 2019. China surged 83% across 2023 but was still 14.5% behind 2019.
But local titles saw mainland China take record box office revenue of $1.1bn over Lunar New Year, showing signs that recovery is underway.
“The world just has to produce 52 good movies a year to put a solid film into cinemas once a week and the box office will be fine,” added Ang. “Just look at the recent Chinese New Year box office in China, from local content alone. We need to do that, be it with local, regional or global feature films. Cinema has been through many challenges in the past but it is coming back.”
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