China box office soars 83% and reaches $7.7bn in 2023

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Full River Red

Source: Huanxi Media Group

‘Full River Red’

China took $7.7bn (RMB54.9b) at the box office in 2023, representing an 83% year-on-year increase and the highest cinema admissions in four years, but still 14.5% behind pre-pandemic 2019.

Local audiences continued to show their unwavering support for local productions, which claimed all the top 10 slots in the annual chart. The biggest among them were two Chinese New Year releases, historical mystery Full River Red and sci-fi The Wandering Earth 2, which both surpassed the landmark RMB4bn ($562m) mark.

Half of the top 10 were local summer hits, including crime drama No More Bets, mystery drama Lost In The Stars, fantasy epic Creation Of The Gods I: Kingdom Of Storms, motivational drama Never Say Never, and animation Chang An. Their outstanding box office helped produce the biggest summer box office ever in the country.

According to consultancy Artisan Gateway, Chinese-language films accounted for an 83.8% market share of the yearly total, while imported titles took the remaining 16.2%, reflecting a similar breakdown in the recent four years.

US action sequel Fast X ($138.7m/RMB984.7m) was the biggest import, which was followed by Japanese animations Suzume ($113.8m/RMB807.8m) and The First Slam Dunk ($93m/RMB660m).

Meanwhile, Maoyan Research Institute, a subsidiary of service provider Maoyan Entertainment, recorded that the total number of cinema admissions reached a four-year high of 1.3 billion.

It also reported that male cinemagoers were the main audience of imported action films, and female audiences tended to favour parent-child animations and films focusing on woman issues, while young audiences preferred films with creative settings and novel topics. The demand for family films tended to spike during holidays and festivals, which was much higher than the average.

The summer box office contributed almost 40% to the full-year box office. The Chinese New Year box office delivered 12.3%.