China’s box office revenue fell by almost a quarter last year as a lack of blockbusters and tough economic conditions drove consumers to turn to streaming services for entertainment.
While China’s film industry surpassed North America’s at the box office for the first time in 2020, its post-pandemic recovery has been weaker. The world’s second-largest film market recorded total revenue of Rmb42.5 billion ($5.8 billion) in 2024, up nearly 23 percent from Rmb54.9 billion a year earlier, the China Film Administration said.
That compares with a 3 percent year-over-year decline in the North American box office to $8.7 billion in 2024, according to Comscore and Deadline.
“The lack of supply to domestic industry definitely hurts, but that hurt was amplified by a weak economy,” said Chris Fenton, a US-China analyst and adjunct professor at the University of Southern California.
On a typically busy Christmas Eve, box office receipts in China fell to 38 million yuan from 170 million in 2023 and were the lowest in at least 13 years, according to Chinese ticketing platform Maoyan.
“(We are) affected by the decrease in consumption,” said Wang, a cinema manager in Beijing. “Simply put, it’s an economic crisis.” Attendance is estimated to have fallen by as much as 35 percent by 2024 in many major Chinese cities, with many theaters operating at a loss, he said.
Instead of a visit to the cinema, many viewers opted for online streaming platforms and short-form video content available on their mobile devices, according to industry analysts at Chinese entertainment data provider Beacon Professional.
Another factor was “not enough quality domestic films on the market to generate buzz and enthusiasm for people to leave,” said Ying Zhu, author of Hollywood in China: Behind the Scenes of the World’s Largest Film Market.
But while streaming services had “certainly eaten into cinema revenues”, Zhu said China’s box office decline had “more to do with overall economic stagnation, with high youth unemployment leading to shrinking pocket money for entertainment”.
Kenny Ng, a film researcher at Hong Kong Baptist University, said the pandemic “still had a lasting impact on consumer behavior in China, especially in the entertainment industry”.
“The shift towards home entertainment has gained momentum, with many consumers hesitant to return to crowded venues such as cinemas,” he said.
Sun, a 27-year-old tech worker in Shanghai, said he only went to the movies twice last year, compared to more than 10 times in previous years, with domestic streaming platforms such as Tencent Video becoming increasingly popular. attractive.
“Many theater plays do not give me a strong desire to see them in the cinema. . . (and) there were not many attractive films released,” he said.
China’s top-grossing film of 2024 was the domestically produced comedy-drama YOLOan adaptation of a Japanese film about a woman who lacks confidence and takes up boxing to change her life. YOLO took Rmb3.4 billion, according to Maoyan, less than the more than Rmb4.5 billion generated by 2023’s top film, the Chinese comedy-mystery Full River Red.
China has experienced weak consumer confidence, with youth unemployment up to 17 percent and wage growth slowing, while rising social tensions have also worried Chinese leaders.
“The comeback of comedies, while helping to ease social tension, also testifies to viewers’ fatigue with big-budget propaganda films,” said Zhu, who is also a professor at Hong Kong Baptist University’s Film Academy.
The Chinese market contributed up to 30 percent of global revenue for Hollywood blockbusters before 2020, according to USC’s Fenton, but their appeal has waned in recent years, with many big films seeing 10 percent or less. of their total coming from Chinese coffers. invoices. Only a Hollywood production – the sci-fi action franchise Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire — made the top 10 highest-grossing films in China last year, according to Maoyan.
Hollywood films have “increasingly failed to connect with domestic audiences,” Zhu said. China’s state-run Xinhua news agency in an opinion piece last year noted “a lack of innovation and creativity in Hollywood films with their formulaic stories that have saturated Chinese audiences.”
“Hollywood movies are losing their luster with China’s Gen Z audience,” said Shi Chuan, vice president of the Shanghai Film Association, referring to the impact of shrinking Western culture on the country’s younger generation.
Shi mentioned the tepid reception for the latter Mission: Impossible as an example. “This is a high-quality film, but it disappointed at the box office, as (many) Gen Z Chinese moviegoers don’t know who Tom Cruise is,” Shi said.
Meanwhile, declining funding, censorship and changing tastes have been blamed by film producers and industry analysts for holding back the domestic industry.
The reason is likely to continue to grow over the next few years “because of the sheer size of (China’s) population,” Fenton said. Its film industry is hoping for domestic blockbusters, including fantasy epics Creation of Gods II: Demonic Confrontation and martial arts awards Legend of the Condor Heroes: The Great Hero, both of which will be released during the peak Lunar New Year season at the end of January, could revive box office sales.
“As always, the quality of the films is important,” said Stanley Rosen, a University of Southern California professor specializing in Chinese society, adding: “An improving economy in China would help a lot.”
