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VIRAL EXCLUSIVE
Aug. 22, 2023
China’s Box Office Heats Up This Summer
Chinese films are recently gaining attention for their superior turnout in theatres, which saw local Chinese film No More Bets (2023) beating out major Hollywood production Barbie (2023) in one of their weekend box-office numbers. How did China become one of the top players in the global film industry, and what does this engender? By: Theng Min Yee
China's cinematic landscape has experienced an unprecedented boom, transforming the country into a major player in the global film industry. Though the recent pandemic saw the country experiencing a dip in its upwards trajectory, recent trends are signalling a resurgence of the cinematic giant. China’s Lunar New Year box-office numbers for this year totalled to a whopping $993.8 million, easily topping the prior festive period which brought in $888.2 million. According to Artisan Gateway, which provides market intelligence services about China, the country’s 2023 cumulative box-office adds up to record-high of $5.19 billion as of August 2023, indicating a 68% jump from its equivalent period in 2022. This emergence of China’s film industry manifests as a reflection of significant shifts in the country’s economic, cultural, and social spheres.
Climbing Up the Ranks
With China becoming the second largest economy in the world, the country’s widened middle-class has been contributing to the surge in demand for entertainment. Their higher buying-power has bulked up box-office numbers significantly, flourishing China’s film industry. The Asian giant retained its title as the world’s largest film market in both 2020 and 2021, before relinquishing its box-office crown back to North America in 2022. Nonetheless, the Chinese film market remains a juggernaut in the global cinema business.
China’s economic boom equally engendered the advancement of its film industry’s proficiency, which witnessed big leaps in terms of production quality and technique. In Frant Gwo’s film The Wandering Earth (2019), a myriad of special effects and technology such as mobile industrial robots (MIR) were used in its making. While foray into the realm of sci-fi has long been made by Chinese production, such as Jackie Chan’s film Bleeding Steel (2017), Gwo’s film has been regarded as China’s first blockbuster sci-fi film.
Echoing the sentiments of many foreign film critics and sci-fi buffs, film enthusiast Simon Abrams praised the movie’s top visuals. “They have somehow blended their many influences in bold, stylish ways that only Hollywood filmmakers like James Cameron and Steven Spielberg have previously managed,” he said.
The Chinese sci-fi feature left an indelible mark in the global film market, breaking into the top 10 movies in the North American weekend box-office, and becoming the fifth highest-grossing film in the history of Chinese cinema.
Cultural and Economic Chokehold
Wall Street Journal reporter Erich Schwartzel, who has been writing about Hollywood’s relationship with China for the past several years, spoke of China’s dominance in the global film industry.
“It comes to the point where even on some of the biggest films that make tons of money around the world, like a Fast & Furious film or a Marvel superheroes movie, getting into China and making money there can mean the difference between profit and loss,” he remarked.
As several cultural critics have stated, China’s pre-eminence in the field has led to Hollywood attempting to appeal to Chinese audience, in order to leverage on the massive Asian market. From Transformer 4: Age of Extinction (2014) featuring Chinese stars and shots of the Great Wall, to Universal Pictures’ The 355 (2022) casting renowned Chinese star Fan Bingbing and depicting a big shootout in the streets of Shanghai, Hollywood has long been tailoring their material to the likes of the Chinese state.
Hollywood’s courting of China panned out well in the beginning, with films like James Cameron’s Avatar (2009) grossing more than $200 million in box-office revenue, due to its immense popularity in China. However, with China’s present film industry offering high-quality productions, as well as diversified and relatable subject-matters to its domestic viewers, overseas filmmakers are struggling to break into the once lucrative market. Films like The Battle at Lake Changjin (2021), which was the second-highest grossing film of 2021, are challenging for overseas filmmakers to replicate due to its intrinsic tones of Chinese national identity, sentiments, and values. This hurdle faced by Hollywood was evident in the underperformance of Disney’s Mulan (2022) which, according to Global Times, had Chinese viewers saying it felt “wooden” and “offensively inauthentic.”
Exacerbating this challenge are China’s strict censorship and protection laws, which survey film contents, and restrict the number of foreign films in Chinese theatres to 34 per year. China’s policing even went as far as banning the release of Christopher Robin (2018) in the country because of concerns surrounding online meme culture, which drew comparison between Chinese president Xi Jinping and the teddy bear Winnie the Pooh.
“No studio in Hollywood today would touch a movie that concerns a storyline involving the Uyghurs or Xinjiang or issues involving Taiwanese independence or demonstrations in Hong Kong,” Wall Street Journal reporter Schwartzel says. “Because of the economic muzzle that China has on the studios today, those things are just complete non-starters.”
Despite the tightening measures around the entry of foreign films, China’s box-office remains buoyed by its homegrown production, even experiencing a 52.9% surge in the first half of 2023. Besides being an indication of the Chinese audience’s inclination towards commercial domestic films, this recent surge is a sign of the Chinese film ecosystem thriving independently. With China being central to Hollywood’s ability to generate box-office profits, and having the upper hand of deeper understanding about its massive Chinese audience, the Asian giant has become a formidable force in the global film industry.
Though Hollywood has long dominated our theatres, seemingly cementing its status as a topper, China’s meteoric rise in the past decade and recent years signals a very possible shift in the leaderboards of the global film industry. For movie buffs seeking to delve into the realm of Chinese films: Recent top earners – like No More Bets (2023), Fengshen Trilogy (2023), and Lost in the Stars (2023) – are a good place to start.
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