The top 10 films at the Chinese box office, and the five biggest flops, in 2018
- Patriotic hit Operation Red Sea, franchise comedy Detective Chinatown 2, and a Chinese Dallas Buyers Club took top honours, eclipsing Hollywood films
- Hong Kong’s Carina Lau, Tony Leung, Nick Cheung and William Chan had a hand in some of the worst performers, as did Li Bingbing, whose star is falling
Film-goers spent 60.98 billion yuan (US$88.7 billion) at Chinese cinemas in 2018. If that sounds like good news, the reality is that growth in box office takings in China appears to be slowing.
From 2009 to 2015, box office receipts for films in China rose from 6 billion yuan to 44 billion yuan, with growth averaging over 30 per cent a year. Takings in 2016 rose only 3.7 per cent, to 46 billion yuan. In 2017 they grew 13.45 per cent.
The box office total for 2018 represents a 9 per cent increase from 2017, but this is just the second year in 10 that the yearly increase in takings has been in single digits.
Of the top 10 movies at the Chinese box office in 2018, four were Hollywood productions and the rest domestic productions. The top three films, each of which took more than 3 billion yuan at the box office, were made in China.
Domestic films recorded ticket sales of 37.9 billion yuan in 2018, accounting for 62 per cent of the total box office, the official Xinhua news agency said late on Monday, citing data from the State Film Administration.
Domestic films in 2017 accounted for 54 per cent of total box office.
China is the second-largest movie market globally after the United States, though it already has more movie screens than the US after years of rapid expansion in cinema networks.
