China now tops the global box office – what’s behind the surge?
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Moving on, it has been a great week for China's film market. China's Spring Festival film season has set a new record. The film box office... ...theatres in big cities across the United States are also capitalising on the Spring Festival, including this prominent...

In just 8 days, the Chinese New Year box office had short-passed 10 billion yuan or 1.4 billion US dollars, a record-breaking number that's propelled the Chinese mainland to overtake North America as the world's top-grossing movie market so far this year.

But this achievement was far from expected. Just a month ago, China's film industry wrapped up a lackluster 2024, with box office revenues falling short of expectations. So what's driving this remarkable resurgence? And what does it mean for filmmakers in China and beyond? To break it all down, my colleague Liu Yushan joins this episode of Deep Dive. It's Saturday, February 8th.

Very impressive box office from this Chinese New Year of the snake. And Yushan, did you make any contribution to the box office this year? Because I know you actually went to watch some extra movies just for recording this show, didn't you?

I mean, not entirely, but definitely a yes on me making my portion of the contribution to the box office during the Spring Festival season this year. The first one that I totally willingly want to watch is the Noja sequel. Of course, I was already a big fan back in 2019 when that first Noja movie, animation movie was out. And I remember it triggered...

five million box office revenue that year that topped the chart and it's not really a big surprise for me that this year it's still a blockbuster that's really storming the Chinese movie industry lately. Yeah so for this spring festival in 2025 one of the records that this spring festival box office has shattered

is that the movie market in China has surpassed North America as the top-grossing movie market in the whole world. I mean, did you ever expect this to happen?

comparing with overseas movie market is still something new that people are discussing nowadays especially at this time that the Chinese movie industry is taking this leap of faith in breaking a new record several new records as a matter of fact nowadays we just got the news I think two days ago that the Chinese

box office revenue for the spring festival film season exceeded 10 billion yuan, which equals over 1.3 billion US dollars. And that's very impressive. That's like historical high. And some people said that, you know, at the beginning of the year of the snake, this is historical

historical, which I believe is true. Hiss-torical. Hiss as the snake sound. Indeed. And now that you mentioned we're exceeding the North American box office, I wouldn't be surprised because I know that some of our top performers like the Creation of the Gods sequel, like No Jazz sequel, as I just mentioned,

It's also screened in North America and in European countries as well. And people, not just the Chinese there, also locals who's really interested in Chinese mythology, Chinese history and the culture. They're all going into the movie theaters and try to just get a grip of what it's like. So yeah, it's not really a surprise at all.

at this point that our box office revenue is exceeding that of the North American one. The movie market during or the box office during the Chinese New Year is usually the strongest one in an entire year.

But still, this one spring festival does feel quite different from the previous Chinese New Year's and also their box office records. So what makes this year's box office stand out from the Chinese New Year of the snake?

I mean, like I mentioned, several record-breaking achievements for this year's Spring Festival movie season. First of all, like we discussed earlier, we achieved over $10 billion of box office revenue. That's a new record high, at least for the Spring Festival record. And also there has been a new, I think it's for the number of

participants that being the moviegoers this year there are more than 187 million moviegoers and that's a new record high in the Chinese film industry I believe which is really impressive and speaking of the particular top performers no just sequel or rather no job - as some people may call it is reaching the highest grossing

Chinese movie of all times breaking the record of the battle of I think the Lake of Chongjin. Yeah, is that the name of that movie from previous years? So now Nu Zha is topping the chart.

for the highest grossing movie of all times as well. So all of these record-breaking, or rather ground-shaking kind of achievements just prove that this year, at the beginning of the year of the snake in 2025, the Spring Festival season movie box office is really making a difference.

and having its impact for the Chinese film industry in general. Yeah, so these are a lot of numbers, a lot of money for the film industry insiders to make. And that's very good news for people working in this industry because in 2024, this industry just wrapped up a rather underwhelming year. They saw both a sharp decline in the number of viewership

the number of people that go to the cinema and also the box office value. And that's quite worrisome for people working in this movie industry. So why do people just have less interest going to the cinema now? I mean, if we look at this from a global perspective, we'll see that there's been a drop.

of attending cinema in person, just worldwide. So not just China. Not just China, apparently, because due to the what we call the Hollywood strikes, starting from 2023 till mid 2024, if still ongoing in some parts,

having such a big impact on a lot of the Hollywood movie being released and delayed to be released in recent years. And then in the case of China, like the US market, we are strongly affected by the streaming industry as well. And this whole streaming platforms led by domestic companies such as iQIYI or Tencent is now worth over 31 billion US dollars. So that's a whole new market that's

So...

still growing and developing stronger day by day. And there we see a lot of short videos and live streams creating some new hashtags such as "Watch this movie in three minutes" or "Watch something in five minutes". Ironically, people don't go to movies as much. But on the short video platforms like Douyin, there's a trend of people watching a short video to finish an illustration of a movie.

within three minutes. Right. And I used to watch that too. It's really convenient. Comparing with sitting inside the cinema and being there for two to three hours just to watch something that can't be wrapped up in three minutes. Of course, people will pursue, well, rather people tend to pursue the less time-consuming way. And that would explain why a lot of people, they don't go to movie theaters anymore. And

And in the meantime, there is this new industry called the mini drama. And I haven't been watching so much about that. But I do understand it's a almost TV series like production where a story is

chopped into smaller episodes of maybe a few minutes and piled up by 15 to 20 episodes per season. That's perhaps another impact from the short video platforms like doing TikTok because these short mini dramas, they feel like slightly longer videos you would normally see on doing TikTok, but they are

substantially shorter and faster than the movies which usually last two or three hours. Indeed, and they have this very, I'll say even grassroots kind of themes that people from even older generations, they'll be falling for it. They'll be looking forward to... Eye-catching titles. Yeah, exactly. I want to find out what happens next.

So, and it doesn't really take much of my time to finish the storyline. And that's something that I think in 2024 alone, according to industry insights, generated almost 7 billion US dollars. So still, there are so many more streaming and video platforms that's doing all these to, you know, just take people's attention to something more quick and convenient. And in the meantime, I would also say that

Nowadays, at least here in China, there's a lot of people, especially young people, that's attending performances or live performances more often, like concerts. There's been numerous concerts held last year. And also for my personal interest, I'm particularly interested in performing arts, such as dance drama. As a matter

of fact, throughout the spring festival season, there's been very famous dance drama performed in various major theaters here in Beijing that I'm aware of. I actually been to one of them. So instead of going somewhere else into a movie theater, for example, I chose to spend that evening golden hours between 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.

just go into the theater and watch a dance drama. That's also something that's grabbing people's attention these days that people have more options, more various and more interesting options to spend their time with, not just going to movie theaters anymore like that

in probably a few decades ago when our parents were younger. So yeah, I think all of the above factors are contributing to this general phenomenon globally that people are indeed having more options and led to the fact that we're not attending to cinema as much as we used to.

Yeah, so there's been a change of spending habits. So people may not be bringing their wallet to the cinemas, theaters, but they might be spending that same money somewhere else. Indeed. So with all these challenges, and that's perhaps why the box office during this Spring Festival event

had surpassed many people's expectations. And that's largely thanks to one animation movie that contributed over half of the 10 billion yuan, breaking its own record that the franchise had set five years ago, and then also setting a new record as the top-grossing movie in China ever. So how did this animation movie Nezha become

become such a phenomenal success in China and that's perhaps extra rare given that the movie industry in the Chinese mainland is currently going through some struggles. You know, after watching Nuo Jia, the sequel, I looked into a lot of the online reviews from different groups of viewers and I came to understand the fact that

people, no matter which generation you're from, if you like a movie, then ultimately at the end of the day, it's about loving the storytelling method that the movie presented or rather feeling resonated with something that's delivered through the movie. So in the case of Noja, people are saying that, you know,

When we see the story, we see a very tight connection between the two core of a good storytelling. That is the technological part. That's the hardcore technology of making such an animation movie. And then there is the story building part. That's the emotional and cultural side of this movie. That's forming almost like the spiral of the DNA of this good story. And that's...

becoming something that people tend to believe deeply these days, that how a good story is told through movies such as Nezha. And in my personal point of view, I think Nezha has managed to demonstrate this sort of what I think is a craftsmanship of making at least the animation movie nowadays as we talk about the Chinese film industry. They're committed. Yeah, they're very committed. The director, nicknamed

jiaozi or dumpling on the social media. He personally said himself that at the very beginning, I just want to make something that I like, that I will feel satisfied. And then I start to think about how I am going to make my audience to like what I do, to like what we present to them, and how to make them feel connected with the movie themselves. And in that process, he

just focused on refining his craft. I think that's a direct quote from the translation of what he said. Just based on this point alone, there's a lot of things that other movie makers could really reflect on themselves as well. Because I was reading that for Nezha, the total number of shots with special visual effects in this Nezha sequel exceeds the entire shot count

of the first movie. So in the sequel, apparently they're using a lot of new technologies as people talk about. There's a beautified facial structure or facial design for the characters. And also some of their scenes will take one year, if not more than one year to just draw or to finish that one scene.

Beyond all that, they're trying to add more sophisticated visual effect. And I heard that they actually tried to outbound some of their scenes to foreign companies, only to find out that after the foreign companies finished

the parts, they feel unsatisfied. So the domestic team had to polish it over and over again. Just to take over. I'm going to do this myself. Yeah, they tried to polish it until it satisfied the really deep and

cultural side that they try to deliver throughout the movie. So that's something that the movie industry here in China is really working hard on. That's to localize not only the technology, but also how we want to tell our own stories. So while this movie Nezha is giving a strong kick to China's film industry,

These days it's been very rare to see a foreign movie to lead the chart of the movies or even to make it into the top 10. And that's very different from just 10 or 20 years ago because I remember as a kid I used to be very excited to go into the cinema to watch the Transformer with my parents. That's one of the biggest imported franchise from Hollywood. And these days it's very different.

So what are the reasons for the foreign movies that are no longer appealing in the Chinese market? I mean, it's hard to conclude just simply by foreign movies not appealing anymore in the Chinese market. But rather, when we look at around two decades ago,

That's a time that the foreign blockbusters really primed in the Chinese market. And that's also a time when the Chinese economy was under strong reforms as well that generated new generations of international collaboration and also private investment in private movie studios. And that's also when a lot of the, like you mentioned, the very famous, well-known sequels entered China. Like,

the one you mentioned just now, The Transformers. Yeah, that's a boys movie. So it makes sense you don't remember this name very well. It's another topic of another day to define what's a boys movie. But again, Titanic, that's something my parents always talk about because back then, for their generation, when they were younger, the Titanic was something they've never seen before. And they feel like that's something...

Really kind of changing their perspective of how to look at the world and then when I was younger instead of watching the Transformers I prefer the Avengers and it's really interesting that around I think it's early 21st century around 2000 to 2010 if not a bit following that time also

All of my classmates and friends, it's like we have this agreement that whenever there's a new Marvel movie, especially the Avengers series came out, we just need to be there and watch and talk about it because it was such a phenomenon back then that teenagers will found cool and it had played its role for us back at that time to just get this impression and get to talk about it and

Then around, I think a decade ago, over a decade ago, we see a massive rise of domestically produced movies. And there's been an elevation of movie qualities, that's for sure. And then several our own sequels like the Wolf Warrior sequel and also the Wandering Earth sequel. And then there is

The more recent ones like the Creation of the God trilogy and now there's the Nezha sequel as well. So all of these movies start to rise and grab people's attention to half

our audience to realize that okay Chinese people can make domestic blockbusters of our own and it's really cool that we're doing it so we see that in the past decade there's been a shift of audience preferences as well that we start to appreciate something that's more culturally connected or something that's replacing the heroic figure from Hollywood phase superstar

to a Chinese story or to a Chinese narration, let's say. So that's been something that's going on in the past decade and we see tremendously increasing attention globally paid on to how we're telling the Chinese cultural stories, how we're adapting the mythologies into something that people can relate to.

I personally love Ne Zha for that as well. Going back to your previous question, because in the Ne Zha movie, that one is not designed or rather made for children alone. It's made for adult audiences as well. And people from different generations, at the 20s and 30s, they can see different aspects of their life and see themselves

screened through the movie in an animated and more abstract, if not poetic way. I would say that's why people are no longer attracted merely by the foreign movies nowadays.

Again, back to the point, we have a lot of well-made domestic movies that's holding the ground these days. So these years we have seen the rise to prominence of a handful of domestic creations, the names that I can recall, The Battle at Lake of Changjing, The Wandering Earth 1, and perhaps even better, Wandering Earth 2. And then there was the first Nezha, and then the second Nezha movie in the Year of the Snake.

To be honest, I haven't watched them all, but I sure have heard the reputation from these movies So now, just very briefly, now as the new record is being set by the second movie from the franchise Nezha What could be the next one that push this record to a higher level? And perhaps, maybe taking Chinese movies to overseas audience

From my very humble personal perspective, I do hope that this movie be the creation of the god third one.

So not the second one? I mean, the second one has proved its value as a joint between the first one and the third one. That's how I see it. Transitioning to the next one. Yeah, to me, it's more like a transitioning phase that lead the story towards its climax. A grand finale. Indeed, but there's still a lot to improve in that process. For example, I just read about this this morning that...

In order to film one of the characters, the shape and his more of like a cinematic figure, the whole Creation of the God team had to fly to, I think, Hollywood in Los Angeles in early 2024 in order to do that. Because instead of using motion capture, they use something new called volume capture, I think. And that's a new technology, relatively new technology that

Throughout the whole world, there's only one set of equipment that can do that, and that's located in Hollywood. So what I'm trying to say is technological-wise, there's still a lot that we can work on in order to better our domestic movies and how...

it could achieve a better presentation and how it can really dig deep into the audience's perspective. And I do hope that the Creation of the God team can

get through this transitioning time and rebuild the movie into such a phenomenal mythology presentation, at least from the Chinese side. Very high expectations from a loyal fan of The Creation of the Gods. You're right. Thank you so much for your time, Yishan. Thank you for having me.

As of Friday evening, the Chinese New Year box office has climbed another 20%, reaching 12 billion yuan or 1.7 billion USD. The standout hit of the season has shattered records, and leading the charts is animated feature Nezha 2, which is raking over 7 billion yuan with ticket sales still surging. It's now surpassed Star Wars: The Force Awakens to become the highest-grossing film in the single market worldwide.

And that brings us to the end of this episode of Deep Dive. If you enjoyed what you just heard, don't forget to follow us on your podcast platforms. Just search for Deep Dive. You can also leave a comment to let us know what you want to learn about China and beyond. This episode is brought to you by me, Li Yunqi, and my colleagues Zhang Zhang and Qi Zhi.

Special thanks to CGTN radio reporter Liu Yushan. I'll see you in the next one.