Chinese cinemas see record box-office takings over New Year holiday

China's box-office takings for the New Year holiday – spanning the period from December 30, 2023 to January 1, 2024 – soared to 1.533 billion yuan (around $215 million), marking a historic milestone in Chinese cinema history.

Notably, films like "Shining for One Thing," "Johnny Keep Walking," "The Gold Finger," "I Did It My Way" and "If You Are the One 3" claimed the top positions in the holiday box-office charts.

Tencent-backed Maoyan Entertainment, a prominent Chinese movie-ticketing platform, reported that the 2024 New Year's Day box-office takings set an unprecedented record with 36.164 million admissions and 1.402 million screenings. This achievement represents an all-time high for the total number of screenings in the history of New Year’s Day box office in China.

Beyond the New Year's Day holiday, the overall box-office takings for 2023 are also worth highlighting. According to data from the China Film Administration, the total box-office revenue for 2023 reached 54.915 billion yuan, with domestic films contributing some 46 billion yuan, accounting for an impressive 83.77 percent of takings.

Of the 73 films crossing the 100 million yuan mark, 50 were domestically produced, and the top 10 box-office rankings were exclusively occupied by domestic movies.

Maoyan further reported that Zhang Yimou emerged as the highest-grossing director in 2023, boasting cumulative directorial box-office takings of 5.895 billion yuan. Zhang's major directorial works in 2023, including "Full River Red" and "Under the Light," consolidated this position, with the latter claiming the title of the highest-grossing film of 2023, amassing a staggering 4.544 billion yuan in box-office revenue.