Chinese box office revenue plunges as industry downturn deepens in 2024

China’s 2024 box office revenue slumped by almost a quarter from the previous year, official data showed on Wednesday, dealing a blow to a limping domestic industry yet to fully recover from the pandemic.

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Box office revenue totalled 42.502 billion yuan ($5.82 billion), according to the China Film Administration. That’s down 22.6% from 54.915 billion yuan in 2023, and 34% lower than the pre-pandemic peak in 2019.

Of that, box office revenue of domestic films totalled 33.439 billion yuan, plunging 27.3% from 46.005 billion yuan in 2023.

Hopes for a post-pandemic uptick in box office revenue for the second year were dashed despite successes including ‘YOLO’, a comedy on how a reclusive woman reconnected with society through boxing, and ‘Successor’, another comedy, about how a couple hid their wealth from their son to promote character building.

The slump was caused by a mix of factors – a decline in the number of feature films, competition from online offerings including micro dramas and a slowdown in the world’s second-largest economy.

For the whole of 2024, the number of moviegoers in urban theatres totalled 1.01 billion, down from 1.299 billion a year earlier.

A total of 612 feature films were produced last year, down from 792 in 2023.

With the local film industry on a wobbly footing, foreign movies made a comeback.

Hollywood blockbuster ‘Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire’ and Japanese animated feature ‘The Boy and the Heron’ made their mark in the top 10, securing the ninth and 10th spots, respectively.

In contrast, the top 10 list of movies by revenue in 2023 was entirely dominated by local titles, according to the state-run Xinhua news agency.

Other foreign successes included ‘Alien: Romulus’. The sci-fi horror flick raked in 786 million yuan, making China its biggest global revenue contributor, Xinhua reported.

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The decline in Chinese offerings last year reflects ebbing investment and output capacity in an industry still struggling with the aftermath of strict COVID-19 restrictions, which disrupted movie production from 2020 to 2022.

As of 3:30 p.m. (0730 GMT), box office revenue on New Year’s Day in 2025 was a little over 200 million yuan.

That was a far cry from the record 1.53 billion yuan during the previous New Year’s Day holiday, which was two days longer thanks to a weekend. ($1 = 7.2996 Chinese yuan renminbi)