The screenings of seven highly-anticipated movies, set to hit Chinese cinemas during the Spring Festival holiday, have been canceled amid a coronavirus outbreak.

Chinese animation "Boonie Bears: The Wild Life" announced on its account on China's Twitter-like Weibo platform Thursday morning that "the film is officially withdrawn from the Spring Festival holiday and will be released another day," stressing that "nothing is more important than the safety and health of families and children."

The film is the seventh installation of the popular animated series of "Boonie Bears." It is the first time for the film not to meet its fans in time during the Spring Festival holiday.

The previous six were all released during the Spring Festival holiday and enjoyed great popularity among children.

The statement said: "We don't want to see our audience bear any health risks because of watching 'Boonie Bears: The Wild Life,' let alone see the possibility of further spread of the virus."

"We are actively contacting theaters and ticketing platforms to properly handle refunds," read the statement, which expressed apologies and extended New Year wishes.

Another Chinese epic animated film "Jiang Ziya: Legend of Deification," produced by Coloroom Pictures, whose most successful blockbuster is "Ne Zha," posted a statement on Weibo, announcing that the film will not get released as planned, and that the company will cooperate with various channels to start the refund process to minimize the loss of the audience.

According to the statement, it took four years to finish the production of the animation, and all members of the production team have been looking forward to bringing the new piece to the audience.

Following the statements from "Boonie Bears: The Wild Life" and "Jiang Ziya: Legend of Deification," more films announced their are putting on hold their original release plans for the same reason, including "Lost in Russia," "The Rescue," "Detective Chinatown 3," "Leap," and "Vanguard."

Following the announcements, "All Spring-Festival movies canceled releases" soon becoming one of the hottest hashtags on Weibo with over 120 million views in two hours.

New release dates of the titles are still unconfirmed.

The movies, slated for release on the first day of the Lunar New Year, earned nearly 380 million yuan (about 54.8 million U.S. dollars) in their presale box office before screenings were scrapped, according to Chinese movie-ticketing leader Maoyan.

The Spring Festival holiday is one of the most significant and competitive battlefields in the world's second-largest film market as 1.4 billion Chinese celebrate the most important festival of the year with family members.

In 2018, a total of 5.6 billion yuan (802 million U.S. dollars) was earned at the Chinese mainland box office during the holiday period, while last year, that total rose to 5.8 billion yuan.

In addition, the highest-earning film of the year is likely to debut during the box-office peak season. In 2019, domestic sci-fi blockbuster "The Wandering Earth" was set to be the year's box-office champion before being defeated over the summer by the phenomenal animated film "Ne Zha," which is now the second-highest earning film of all time in China.

According to an analysis of Chinese audience interest 50 days ahead of the Spring Festival holiday released by Alibaba Pictures' big data promotional platform Beacon last month, audiences this year were seven times more interested in watching a Spring Festival film than the same period last year.