Chinas Movie Theaters Thrive As Economic Gloom Descends. Hollywood Is Missing Out
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China's economy may be stagnant, but young women have been flocking to movie theaters for record months to see local films.
Box office receipts reached 23.44 billion yuan ($3.2 billion) between June and September, the highest total ever for the period, according to data from Dengta and Maoyan, China's top box office companies.
This increase was mainly due to the hot summer. Ticket sales during the traditional June-August peak season reached a record 20.6 yuan ($2.8 billion) in 2019, surpassing the previous summer's peak of 17.8 billion yuan ($2.4 billion).
More than 570 million people, mostly women, flocked to cinemas in the last four months.
According to Alibaba-backed Dengta ( BABA ), 61% of the top five moviegoers were women, the highest percentage ever. About half of the audience was between the ages of 20 and 29.
The box office record is a rare bright spot in China's economy, which has lost momentum after an initial recovery as consumers emerge from three years of strict Covid-19 restrictions. Analysts say history shows that movies do well in tough economic times because they offer escapism at a relatively low cost.
"[China's] consumption of things like housing and cars has fallen dramatically," said Stanley Rosen, a professor of political science and international affairs at the US-China Institute at the University of Southern California.
"But they can afford to go to the cinema. And this makes you forget about depression," he said .
China's gross domestic product grew by just 0.8% in the second quarter compared with the previous three months. The all-important real estate market, in which Chinese households own 80% of assets, continues to decline. With increasing uncertainty about the future, people are hoarding money.
Rosen drew an analogy between the situation in China and the United States during the Great Depression of the 1930s, when Americans "had no money" but films starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers were big at the box office.
A clean run
While "Barbie" and "Oppenheimer" have dominated the global box office in recent months, the most popular films in China have been domestic films: the crime thriller "No More Bets", the romantic crime thriller "Lost in the Stars" and the fantasy epic "Genesis" peace. Gods I : Kingdom of Storms.
Perry Peng, 23, a gallery worker and film buff in Shanghai, said he was "amazed" by the quality of Chinese films he saw this summer.
"We haven't seen such good local films for a long time. We're surprised they can be this good," he said, adding that Warner Bros. and said he also likes the movies “Oppenheimer” and “Barbie,” which are broadcast by CNN, part of Warner Bros. Opening.
His favorite this year was Gods of Creation I: Stormy Realm , a martial arts fantasy based on 16th-century Chinese novels.
"I was a big fan of American and European films," Peng said. "But I suddenly felt that China had its own Lord of the Rings."
He says his generation born after 2000 is increasingly becoming the "major consumer force." And there have been changes in what and how they consume.
"We want to live in the moment and not think about the future," Peng said. "Some of us don't even want to pay social insurance. We just want to enjoy life as much as we can and enjoy the present moment.
Perry's sister, Pansy Peng, who works in Hong Kong's financial sector, said the movies were cheap and allowed her to forget her troubles, at least for a while.
"Things like houses and cars seem really far away or out of our control," he said. “Our lives are already miserable, why can't we enjoy the things that make us happy? »
The sisters live in some of China's most cosmopolitan cities, but analysts say audiences have grown more in smaller cities this year.
"The economy is in trouble," said Xuguang Chen, a professor at Peking University's School of Arts. "From a consumer point of view, going to the movies is more suitable for low- and middle-income audiences. »
According to Chen, this has been helped by the improvement in the quality and variety of films on offer this summer.
"No More Bets," the top-grossing movie of the summer with 3.52 billion yuan ($480 million), said it had an anti-fraud theme that attracted low-income audiences.
With the support of women
Surprisingly, given the country's gender imbalance, China's recent box office boom is driven by women. According to the statistics of 2022, the male to female ratio was 104.7 percent.
The highest percentage of female viewers - 67% - was recorded in the film "Lost in the Stars", which has a feminist message and reflects real events.
"Men may outnumber women in China, but the latter group's growing purchasing power requires new investments to serve them," Morning Consult senior analyst Kevin Tran said in a report last month.
"As Hollywood struggles to regain the Chinese box office dominance it once relied on, studios will benefit from attracting more women from the country," she said.
According to CNN's calculations based on Dengta data, American films accounted for only 14% of China's box office this year, the second largest share in the world. If this trend continues through the end of 2023, excluding pandemic years, Hollywood will have its lowest annual share in more than a decade.
Hollywood's share has steadily declined in recent years due to increased censorship, deteriorating bilateral relations, nationalistic sentiment fueled by state propaganda, and competition from domestically produced films.
International studios should consider using more Chinese women in their marketing campaigns for romantic comedies, musicals and other genres they prefer, Tran said.
"Next year, some studios may be more optimistic about moviegoers because fewer women in China are getting married and they have more time for leisure activities like going to the movies," he said.
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