Coronavirus: China reopens hundreds of cinemas as virus outbreak slows, but is anybody going?

A fraction of China’s cinemas reopened last week, but most have seen only a trickle of customers amid lingering fears of coronavirus infection

Pitiful box office revenues have underlined the challenge facing Beijing as it tries to get the economy back up and running

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The coronavirus forced the closure of cinemas across the country on January 24, a day before the Lunar New Year holiday. Photo: Reuters

Published: 8:15pm, 25 Mar 2020Updated: 9:12pm, 25 Mar 2020

Cinemas in many Chinese cities began reopening last week after a weeks-long shutdown due to the coronavirus outbreak, but dismal box office takings highlighted just how far the consumer economy has to go before returning to normal.

A total of 495 cinemas, or 4.4 per cent of China’s total, had opened by Tuesday, but they attracted only 1,003 cinema-goers – an average of about two people per cinema per day – according to statistics from Maoyan Entertainment, a firm monitoring nationwide box revenues.

The busiest cinema on was in Xinjiang autonomous region where one operator attracted 24 cinema-goers for the day across six movies.

The poor nationwide box office revenues, which stood at 26,000 yuan (US$3,676) for Tuesday, underscored the difficulties facing Beijing as it tries to get the economy back up and running, despite hopes that the services sector would rebound sharply when the pandemic was under control.

China’s movie industry has boomed in the past decade and is a poster child for the country’s consumer spending power. Annual box office revenues rose 5.4 per cent in 2019 to 64.3 billion yuan (US$9 billion) – more than 10 times the 6.2 billion yuan that was notched up in 2009.

The coronavirus, however, forced the closure of cinemas across the country on January 24, a day before the Lunar New Year holiday period when Chinese typically spend large amounts on shopping and dining.

Box office sales on January 25 this year were just 1.81 million yuan (US$256,000), compared to 1.46 billion yuan (US$206 million) on the same day in 2018.