In 2021 at the height of the pandemic, the Chinese box office surged to overtake the U.S. as the largest global market for movie ticket sales. While theatres in the U.S. were struggling with shutdowns and low attendance, China’s zero-COVID policy was more successful in holding down infection rates and keeping theatres open for business. The locally-produced blockbuster THE BATTLE OF LAKE CHANGJIN became the largest box office hit in Chinese history.
One year later, the positions of the two global box office leaders have reversed.
China has been struggling to hold down the spread of hyper-infectious Omicron variants, leading to periodic lockdowns of the population and closure of venues of public gathering, including movie theatres. Locally produced vaccines have been less effective than Western-developed vaccines and as a result, they have been less widely accepted by the population.
In addition, the availability of new movies to attract audiences is increasingly controlled by government censors, who forbid the distribution of many new titles based on what it determines to be unacceptable content. These decisions impact many Hollywood titles as well as certain local productions. Meanwhile, the U.S. movie business continues to make steady progress on its road to a box office recovery.
Taking all of this into account, last year’s talk of China overtaking the U.S. as the largest global box office market seems now to have been just that — talk.