China’s holiday box office plunges theaters raise movie ticket prices
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On February 1, 2022, moviegoers lined up to see promotional posters of Chinese Lunar New Year movies in Shanghai.
Getty Images| Future Publishing | Getty Images
BEIJING — Chinese consumer spending on movies plunged during the Lunar New Year holiday last week as theaters raised prices to record highs.
This seven-day vacation that concluded Sunday was the most important week for Chinese movie releases and is the highest in China. It also holds the record for the largest worldwide box office. This year saw the debut of eight Chinese films.
According to Maoyan, 6.04 billion Yuan ($951.1 Million) was the holiday box office total. This is a 23% drop from 7.84 billion yuan in the same time period 2021.
The data revealed that tickets were on average 8 percent more expensive than last year. It was 56 Yuan (8.80) for a single ticket, the most expensive ever recorded since 2017.
“Many consumers complained.” [it was]Unfeasible for all members of the family [a] movie,” said Gao Huan, Beijing-based managing director at consulting firm Alvarez & Marsal. Moviegoers who are willing to spend less often than others, tend to choose to watch movies at home.
Covid-related travel restrictions have been imposed on certain areas and lockdowns in the neighborhood. weighed on Chinese consumer spending over the last two years.
Overall tourism consumption during the holiday was 3.9% lower than in 2021 — at 289.12 billion yuan, according to the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. It’s still well below the pre-pandemic level and only 56.3% of total tourism consumption was recorded in 2019, data revealed.
Ting Lu (chief China economist, Nomura) pointed out the fact that this year’s holiday box-office drop is due to a strong base in 2021 as the Lunar New Year fell on Valentine’s Day.
In a note, he stated that covid-related restrictions made it more difficult to maintain high ticket sales. Anecdotal evidence suggests that some cinemas raised their ticket prices to offset the anticipated loss of profits.
China’s consumer prices have risen alongside a rise in global inflation. The 1% increase in China’s consumer prices over the past year, however, is still far less than the 8% jump in ticket prices.
The Lunar New Year’s box office was about 6. billion yuan, which is slightly more than the 5.9 million yuan for 2019. Due to the coronavirus epidemic, seven movies were delayed in their theatrical releases. Theaters were practically closed for the Lunar New Year holiday 2020.
China-made films dominate
China’s theaters were forced to endure intermittent lockdown measures and fluctuations in movie availability two years after the outbreak.
Chinese-made movies are now enjoying a larger share of local markets. This is due to policies by the government that limit the distribution of foreign films and support homegrown productions. According to Chinese official data, the gap increased during the pandemic. The share of foreign films dropped to 16% in 2020 from nearly a third the year before.
Gao suggested that China’s increasing popularity of locally-produced content could negatively impact the overall box office. Gao stated that “the cinemas are under much greater pressure to breakeven”, and suggested they must look elsewhere for income, or raise ticket prices.
Last week, the top-grossing movie during holiday time was “Watergate Bridge”, a sequel last year to the film that featured Chinese soldiers fighting American forces during the Korean War.
Maoyan data revealed that “Too Cool to Kill” – a Chinese comedy, was the second most popular film in terms of gross box office.
Foreign films that made it to Chinese theaters last year included “Fast and Furious 9” — which ranked fifth nationwide by box office — as well as “Dune” and James Bond movie “No Time to Die.” However no Marvel superhero film has come to China since 2019.
China Film Administration (China Film Administration) announced that it wants domestic movies to earn at least 55% of local box office revenue and for about 50 Chinese films to make at least 100 millions yuan per year.
— CNBC’s Sarah WhittenContributed to the report.
Disclosure: Comcast owns CNBC and NBCUniversal. NBCUniversal owns Rotten Tomatoes and is the distributor for “F9”.
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