China’s National Day box office tops a billion yuan on day 3, but holiday haul lags
The second entry in a historical war trilogy leads the way, with a sci-fi action film on its tail, but China’s film industry is still chasing pre-pandemic interest
China’s box office bookings for the ongoing National Day holiday period had surpassed 1 billion yuan (US$142 million) as of Thursday morning, according to box office tracker Dengta Data, but the industry remains under pressure compared with years past.
This year’s bookings crossed the 1 billion yuan mark on the third day of the seven-day “golden week” holiday, which started on Tuesday, compared with last year, when the milestone figure was reached on the second night.
While the box office saw a strong start to the season with 494 million yuan on Tuesday – a 15 per cent rise from last year – its pace soon slackened.
Chinese media outlets were predicting that the box office revenue during the holiday could climb to between 2 billion and 2.7 billion yuan this year. That would see revenue potentially fall short of last year’s 2.73 billion haul, which benefited from the holiday being a day longer, owing to the timing of the Mid-Autumn Festival.
By Thursday morning, historical war film The Volunteers: The Battle of Life and Death was in the lead with about 364 million yuan from 8.7 million tickets sold.
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Directed by Chen Kaige, the film is the second instalment of a planned trilogy on the Korean war. The first part, To the War, placed third in the National Day box office standings last year.
