China adds cinemas to the ever-growing list of metrics that show it has overtaken the US
An aggressive build out has put the mainland ahead of the US in terms of cinema screens just as box office sales in China show signs of contraction for the first time in a decade
China is poised to overtake the US as home to the world’s biggest number of cinema screens, boosted by unprecedented theatre building spree, according to a recent study.
There are on average 27 cinema screening rooms completed each day across China this year, compared to 22 last year, according to a report by London-based market researcher IHS Markit.
Meanwhile, the country’s movie market growth took a sudden hit this year with a significant slowdown -- easing from a staggering 48 per cent expansion in ticket sales in 2015 to a muted 4.7 per cent for the first 10 months of this year, figures from industry consultancy Entgroup showed.
Propelled by a five-year movie market boom that helped China’s box office takings swell at an average annual rate of 34 per cent over the last a few years, Chinese conglomerates led by Dalian Wanda Group have stepped up their cinema building spree.
The property-to-entertainment business empire controlled by China’s richest man Wang Jianlin now runs the biggest theatre exhibitor chain in Asia, and is on track to become the world’s largest after its US subsidiary AMC Entertainment’s takeover of European cinema giant Odeon & UCI Cinemas.