The country clocked around 47 billion yuan ($7.4 billion) in film revenues in 2021, according to figures released by the China Film Administration on January 01. That was a massive increase from the previous year, when China’s box office only took in around $3 billion because of the pandemic, and far closer to 2019 revenues of around $9.3 billion.
Despite the plunge in 2020, China that year surpassed the US for the first time to become the world’s largest movie market thanks to its super-effective control of Covid at an early stage.
Films produced outside of China have routinely accounted for more than 40% of the share of the Chinese box office. But in a sign of the fading power of Hollywood and other foreign movies in general, the contribution from domestic films towards overall box office revenue reached nearly 85% last year, according to the film administration, the highest share in recent years.
The expanding share of Chinese films is an illustration of the “overall defeat” of imported productions in China last year, wrote Pang Hongbo, a columnist for Chinese film news outlet Yuemu Film Observation.
“This situation is not only because of a sharp decrease in the number of overseas films [released] due to the pandemic… but also comes down to the lack of attractiveness of foreign movies, which has shown the shifting taste of [Chinese] film viewers. This means the fading out of imported movies could become a broad trend in China”, wrote Pang.
But with the coming of age of Chinese movie productions, the country’s own blockbusters began to challenge their Hollywood peers, and have now become the dominant power in China’s film scene. In fact, the list of the country’s 10 highest-grossing films of all time is made up of nine Chinese movies and only one Hollywood blockbuster – and that was Avengers: Endgame, which was screened in 2019 and ranked in seventh place with $680 million in box office revenues in China, according to Chinese ticketing website Maoyan.
However, the Chinese war epic wasn’t the highest earning movie globally last year – that honor went to an American superhero film based on the Marvel Comics character.
Sony’s comic-book megahit has eclipsed that milestone in a near-record 12 days, tying with 2015’s “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” as the third-fastest film to reach the billion-dollar benchmark. Only 2018’s “Avengers: Infinity War” and 2019’s “Avengers: Endgame” were quicker, smashing the coveted tally in 11 and five days, respectively.
Prior to Spidey’s reign, MGM’s James Bond sequel “No Time to Die,” which grossed $774 million globally, came the closest and stood as the highest-grossing Hollywood film of 2021 (and the pandemic).
I guess the world's appetite for superheroes is just enormous!
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