Chinese cinema roars back with full box-office recovery
Movies such as Sister fuelled China's box office revival.
PHOTO: mm2 Entertainment
PUBLISHED ONJune 25, 2021 7:48 AMByMardhiah Haslan
The ongoing pandemic has forced most entertainment and non-essential businesses around the world to take a backseat. Despite this, the Chinese film industry has bounced back tremendously.
According to UK-based industry analytics firm Gower Street, China is the first country in the world to reach "full box-office recovery" in August last year.
As of mid-June 2021, the Chinese box office statistics are one per cent ahead of the same period in 2020, and just one per cent below the average box office of the three pre-pandemic years (2017 to 2019).
This is despite cinemas operating at 75 per cent capacity and a lack of Hollywood content. According to Gower Street, no other market has reached near the pre-pandemic scale, with the US still 85 per cent behind where it was before the outbreak.
Patriotic films such as My People, My Homeland; The Sacrifice; and The Eight Hundred bolstered the Chinese market in 2020. The Eight Hundred was the highest-grossing film in the world last year after raking in US$460 million ($602 million) at the local box office.
Crowd-pleasers like Detective Chinatown 3; Hi, Mom; Sister; and Zhang Yimou's Cliff Walkers also fuelled the country's box office revival, which was propelled by record-high sales during the February Chinese New Year, April Tomb-Sweeping, and May 1 Labour Day holidays.
Gower Street added the total takings for China's box office in 2021 is predicted to reach US$8 billion, ranking it first in the world by a large margin.