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Source: The Hollywood Reporter
Looking back on the Lunar New Year of the year 2020, one can’t help but wonder just how prosperous the box office of China could’ve been. Considered by many to be one of the most cherished times of the year for most Chinese citizens (similar to the Christmas or summer seasons in the United States), the Lunar New Year has previously seen major economic boosts as the people of the Middle Kingdom gather together and celebrate. That was not the case for the year 2020 however. As a result of the emergence of the Coronavirus, which would quickly spread throughout the world and lead to the global COVID-19 pandemic, the Chinese government took action and forced all businesses to close down until further notice. Movie theaters were not exempt from these mandates, and as a result, a time that should’ve seen several box office records be broken instead left very little for the film industry to take in.
Moving forward a whole year since the beginning of the outbreak, it’s quite remarkable how the situation has almost completely reversed itself. While some measures have been kept in place in order to prevent the return of the Coronavirus, China has gotten as close as it can to returning to normal, and the Lunar New Year can once again be celebrated to the fullest extent possible. The nation’s movie theaters are among the biggest benefactors of this returning celebration, and not only are they finding great success once more, but they’re doing significantly better than before the pandemic started.
When comparing the box office sales of the current Lunar New Year to those of 2019, one can see that this year’s sales have skyrocketed past those of the previous Lunar New Year celebration (not counting the year 2020 due to the government-mandated closures), which had already seen the shattering of several box office records. In the first three days of the 2021 Lunar New Year, Chinese movie theaters earned approximately 4.5 billion yuan (which amounts to just under $700 million in American dollars) in ticket salesi, a 33% increase from the year 2019. These numbers are even more impressive considering that most theaters still have maximum capacity guidelines for most of their auditoriums, most of which are no higher than 75%. Even with the limitations of how many tickets can be sold per showing, Chinese theaters seem to have little disadvantage when it comes to getting as many people as possible into these venues.
Of the many films taking advantage of the Lunar New Year, it’s “Detective Chinatown 3” that’s proving to be the most prosperous. The third installment of the immensely popular action and comedy series, the film earned $397 million in its opening weekend, not only racing past other titles released that weekend to top an already booming box office chart, but it also outpaced “Avengers: Endgame” to receive the biggest opening in a single market of any film in the world.
Current estimates predict that “Detective Chinatown 3” will finish its run with a total of around $750 million in ticket sales. While this won’t make the film the highest grossing film in the history of the Chinese box office – it would have to surpass the $874 million that “Wolf Warrior 2” earned in 2017 – the success the film has already achieved is quite astounding, especially given how little movie theaters were making just about a year prior.
Coming in second in terms of overall ticket sales is the romantic comedy “Hi, Mom”, taking in around $161 million over the weekend. Although this is less than half of what “Detective Chinatown 3” had gained, it’s still a very respectable total, and positive word-of-mouth could see the numbers go up dramatically in the near future. Other major film releases to claim a stake in the Lunar New Year box office include the action fantasy “A Writer’s Odyssey” with an estimated $48 million, the animated family film “Boonie Bears: The Wild Life” with about $38.5 million, the video game adaptation “The Yin Yang Master” with around $24.9 million, and the animated fantasy “New Gods: Rezha Reborn”, which received $21.2 million over the weekend. Least successful of the new releases was “Endgame” (not to be confused with the Avengers film of the same name), a comedy-drama that only took in $12.1 million over the three-day period.
When comparing the current Chinese box office to that of the United States, it’s not hard to see why some are feeling dismayed by the current situation. Whereas China has managed to reopen many of its major markets and allow local movie theaters to see massive resurgences in ticket sales, the United States has not had such luck due to the remaining presence of the COVID-19 pandemic. With several theaters across the nation still closed under local government mandate, most of the major studios have withheld most of their biggest blockbuster releases, and the few theaters that are open are receiving very little in terms of ticket sales, not only because of the lack of product, but also due to strict maximum capacity standards that prevent theaters from fully selling out each screening.
During the most recent weekend, from February 12th to the 14th (referred to by many as Valentine’s Day weekend), the biggest ticket seller only earned a total of just under $2.08 million, significantly less than even the slowest periods of a year no hampered by a global pandemic. That film, “The Croods: A New Age”, reached the top of the box office in its twelfth weekend of release; while there have been a small handful of new releases over the weekend (one of them, the historical drama “Judas and the Black Messiah”, entered the market at #2 with a $2.07 million weekend gross), it’s telling of how little Hollywood is willing to release any major films that the weekend’s biggest earner has been screening in theaters for over three months.
Yet not everyone is looking at the Chinese box office’s prosperity with envy. Many have argued that much of that resurgence can be attributed to how long Chinese moviegoers have had to wait until they can go out to the movies once again, taking the opportunity to quench their thirst for a big-screen viewing as soon as it became available. If the people of China are that willing to return to the movies once they are free to do so, then there’s little reason why a similar pattern shouldn’t emerge once all theaters in the United States are open once again. There’s no guarantee this will happen, let alone when it would happen (especially considering how extreme winter weather has begun to have a major impact on much of the central United States), but Hollywood is hopeful that once they return to releasing their films in theaters, those who have been seeking to return to the movies will do so in as big of numbers as possible.
