China’s 2016 box office is not doing well: only two weeks before the end of the year, ticket sales are still 2.6 billion yuan (374,359 US dollars) below the total box office revenue for 2015.

With two eagerly awaited films hitting the cinemas last Friday - Zhang Yimou's "The Great Wall" and a movie version of the popular documentary "Masters in the Forbidden City" - the battle for the box office is in full swing.

“The Great Wall” marks Zhang's first English-language debut and is a hugely ambitious China-US co-production. Although this film is in the monster genre, Zhang thinks he still infused it with his trademark and very strong hints of Chinese culture, “just like I did before in my previous films.”

"Masters in the Forbidden City" is a more humble production, based on a three-episode TV documentary broadcast in 2015 on China Central Television. The TV version was an instant Internet hit, receiving millions of views and high ratings from Internet users who described it as an influential documentary.

The new cinema version now scans the old Imperial Palace in Beijing and says it uncovers more secrets with restoration technology.

At the start of 2016, China's box office made a whopping 3.0 billion yuan (430 million US dollars). But the momentum has slowed since April and the market didn't perform well during two usually golden periods: the summer vacation season and the National Day holiday season in October.

Compared to the rapid growth of the past few years, it seems the market has cooled down. 

But experts also say this has come after massive growth in the past 10 years.

"China's box office sales have increased from 1 billion yuan (144 million US dollars) to 40 billion yuan (5.76 billion US dollars) in the past decade as the industry has adopted more market-oriented reform measures,” Zhang Hongsen, director of the Film Bureau of the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film & Television told CCTVNEWS.

“In fact, the film market has posted an average growth of 35 percent year-on-year since 2003,” he added.  

Even if the market is now cooling down, Zhang emphasized that “what’s more important is the quality of the films.”

Over the next two weeks, more home productions are set to be released, including "Sword Master" by actor-turned-director Derek Yee, "The Ferryman" produced by Hong Kong’s Wong Kar-wai, and "Railroad Tigers" starring kungfu superstar Jackie Chan.

Whether any of them will revive the box office is unclear. But one thing is for sure: the industry looks set to continue its uphill battle next year.