China’s box office expands to world’s largest, defying a year of disastrous takings as Covid-19 brings cinemas to their knees
- Movie ticket sales in China stood at US$3.06 billion last year, 69 per cent lower than the record high of US$9.8 billion in 2019
- War epic ‘The Eight Hundred’ becomes the first Chinese blockbuster to top the global box office charts
China overtook the US as the world’s biggest box office market for the first time last year but revenues fell sharply as the mainland’s control of the Covid-19 pandemic helped to bring film-goers back to the cinemas even as the entertainment industry in the rest of the world endures a slump.
Ticketing revenue in China, however, plummeted 69 per cent from the all-time high of 64.27 billion yuan (US$9.8 billion) in 2019. And in the US, ticket sales sank 80 per cent from the second-best box office haul ever of US$11.4 billion in 2019.
The Eight Hundred, a war epic about 800 Chinese soldiers fighting against the Japanese army in Shanghai in 1937, raked in US$461.34 million, pipping Bad Boy for Life – a Hollywood movie about Miami detectives – which came second with US$426.5 million in ticket sales, according to data from Box Office Mojo. Bad Boy for Life was released last January before the pandemic forced the closure of cinemas worldwide.