China’s box office figure for the Spring Festival holiday was nothing but stellar. Despite the COVID-related capacity restrictions, by the end of February 17, collection for the holiday period topped 7.8 billion yuan ($1.2 billion), surpassing the all-time high figure of 2019.
Detective Chinatown 3, which topped holiday rankings, took in more than 3.7 billion yuan as of February 19, according to data from Chinese ticketing platform Maoyan. Hi, Mom, and A Writer’s Odyssey, which came in second and third place, each grossed around 3.2 billion and 600 million yuan.
It is the first time that all of the top 10 grossing films for the holiday were made by Chinese studios. Hollywood blockbusters, which usually had their foothold in China’s Spring Festival box office, had many of their theatrical releases delayed or canceled.
Right now Hollywood is facing a series of challenges vis-à-vis China, said Michael Berry, director of the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. While there is a downturn in direct Chinese investment into Hollywood, there is also a lack of “products” to sell to China especially given a decimated U.S. film production amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
People wearing face masks to protect against the coronavirus watch film at a movie theater in Beijing, China, July 24, 2020. /AP
After the pandemic shut down theaters across the U.S., major Hollywood studios announced that they would shift their tentpole releases to digital streaming platforms or delay their theatrical releases indefinitely. No Time to Die, Godzilla vs. Kong, and Avatar 2 are among the big-budget franchise films that are expected to make a splash in China but are delayed screening so far because of the pandemic.
But Chinese homegrown films started to overtake foreign releases in Chinese box office even before the pandemic. Last year, Tenet, the sci-fi epic by legendary director Christopher Nolan, brought in $66 million in China’s box office, in comparison to homemade war film The Eight Hundred which took in $472 million and became the highest-grossing movie of 2020 worldwide.
In 2019, among the top 10 grossing films in China, two were from Hollywood studios. In 2020, there was only one.
“China has been able to produce films that achieve not only comparable box office success, but they can do so on a fraction of the budget, and by solely relying upon the Chinese market,” Berry told CGTN.