China’s box office takings fell by almost a quarter last year as a lack of blockbusters and tough economic conditions saw consumers turn to streaming services for entertainment.
While China’s film industry surpassed North America’s in box office revenues for the first time in 2020, its recovery after the pandemic has been weaker. The world’s second-largest film market recorded total box office revenues of Rmb42.5bn ($5.8bn) in 2024, down nearly 23 per cent from Rmb54.9bn a year earlier, said the China Film Administration.
That compares with a 3 per cent year-on-year drop in the North American box office to $8.7bn in 2024, according to Comscore and Deadline.
“A lack of domestic industry supply definitely hurt, but that damage was amplified by a poor economy,” said Chris Fenton, a US-China analyst and adjunct professor at the University of Southern California.
On a usually busy Christmas Eve, box office revenues in China plunged to Rmb38mn from Rmb170mn in 2023 and were the lowest in at least 13 years, according to Chinese ticketing platform Maoyan.
“[We are] affected by the consumption downgrade,” said Wang, a cinema manager in Beijing. “Simply put, it’s an economic crisis.” Attendance was estimated to have dropped by up to 35 per cent in 2024 in many major Chinese cities, with a lot of theatres operating at a loss, he said.
Instead of a visit to the cinema, many viewers were opting 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 head out”, said Ying Zhu, author of Hollywood in China: Behind the Scenes of the World’s Largest Movie Market.
But while streaming services had “certainly eaten into cinema revenue”, Zhu said China’s box office decline had “more to do with overall economic stagnation, with the high youth unemployment rate leading to shrinking pocket money for entertainment”.
Kenny Ng, a film scholar at Hong Kong Baptist University, said the pandemic still “had a lasting impact on consumer behaviour in China, particularly in the entertainment industry”.
“The shift towards home entertainment has gained momentum, with many consumers remaining hesitant to return to crowded venues like cinemas,” he said.
Sun, a 27-year-old tech worker in Shanghai, said he only went to the cinema twice last year, compared with more than 10 times in previous years, with domestic streaming platforms such as Tencent Video becoming increasingly attractive.
“Many theatrical releases don’t give me a strong urge to watch them in cinemas . . . [and] there weren’t many attractive movies released,” he said.
China’s top-grossing film in 2024 was the domestically produced comedy-drama YOLO, an adaptation of a Japanese film about a woman who lacks confidence and takes up boxing to change her life. YOLO took in Rmb3.4bn, according to Maoyan, lower than the more than Rmb4.5bn generated by the top movie of 2023, the Chinese comedy-mystery Full River Red.
China has been experiencing weak consumer confidence, with youth unemployment as high as 17 per cent and wage growth slowing, while growing social tensions have also concerned Chinese leaders.
“The return of comedies, while helping to defuse the social tension, also attests to viewer fatigue towards big-budget propaganda films,” said Zhu, who is also a professor at Hong Kong Baptist University’s Academy of Film.
The Chinese market contributed up to 30 per cent of global revenues for Hollywood blockbusters before 2020, according to USC’s Fenton, but their appeal has faded in recent years, with many big movies seeing 10 per cent or less of their totals coming from Chinese box office receipts. Only one Hollywood production — the sci-fi action franchise Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire — made the top 10 grossing films in China last year, according to Maoyan.
Hollywood films have increasingly “failed to connect with local audiences”, said Zhu. China’s state news agency Xinhua in an opinion last year noted “a lack of novelty and creativity in Hollywood movies with their formulaic storylines having satiated Chinese audiences”.
“Hollywood movies are losing their lustre with China’s Gen Z audiences,” said Shi Chuan, vice chair of the Shanghai Film Association, referring to Western culture’s shrinking influence on the country’s younger generation.
Shi cited the lukewarm reception for the latest Mission: Impossible as an example. “This is a high-quality movie but it disappointed at the box office, as [many] Chinese Gen Z moviegoers don’t know who Tom Cruise is,” said Shi.
Meanwhile, declining financing, censorship and changing tastes have been blamed by film producers and industry analysts for holding back the domestic industry.
The box office would probably still continue to grow over the next few years “due to the enormous size of [China’s] population”, said Fenton. Its film industry is hoping domestic blockbusters, including the fantasy epic Creation of the Gods II: Demonic Confrontation and martial arts fare The Legend of the Condor Heroes: The Great Hero, both set to be released during the peak lunar new year season at the end of January, could revive box office sales.
“As always, the quality of films is important,” said Stanley Rosen, a University of Southern California professor specialising in Chinese society, adding: “An improving economy in China would help a lot.”
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