Without significant new release films, China’s cinema box office has fallen to less than half of its pre-COVID levels.
Finally, a newly released film has penetrated China’s box office top five, the first time this has happened in a month.
But “Serendipity Love” had so little impact that it failed to displace the incumbent “Home Coming” from first place. And the nationwide theatrical business slipped to within a whisker of its weakest weekend performance this year.
The total achieved by all films currently on release was just $9.7 million over the latest Friday to Sunday weekend, according to consultancy Artisan Gateway. Only two weekends in 2022 have been weaker, in late April and early May, when Shanghai was in a state of lockdown.
The current theatrical weakening means that the box office deficit compared with previous years is deepening. China’s cinema box office is currently down 35% on 2021, with a year-to-date total of $3.88 billion.
Against 2019, the last pre-COVID year, it is down by more than half. China’s box office total at the same point in 2019 stood at $8.11 billion.
The slowdown means another rewriting of the global box office hierarchy. China’s box office had been increasing for much of the decade to 2019. And the country overtook Japan to become the world’s second largest cinema market. In 2020 and again in 2021, due to different speeds of recovery from COVID, China’s theatrical industry overtook that of North America to become the global champion.
