Star Wars Shanghai Fan Event (Photo : Getty Images)
At the rate Chinese are watching movies, whether in English or Mandarin language, projections have been made that China would soon become the biggest movie market in the world.
A new report by the media watchdog in China provided solid figures to back that claim. In 2015, box office totals in the Asian giant reached 44.06 billion yuan ($6.7 billion). When compared to 2014 figures, last year’s totals represented a 48.7 percent growth.
Ticket sales for domestic movies in 2015 topped 27.136 billion yuan ($4.13 billion). In the last 12 months, 47 domestic films earned over 10 million yuan, while 11 earned more than 1 billion yuan ($152 million) within one week after release.
But the watchdog used a 30 percent average growth rate to make projections for 2016 and 2017. They estimated local box office would hit 60 billion yuan ($9.12 billion), just $1.28 billion less than the $10.4 billion box office totals in the U.S. in 2015. It showed a 5 percent decline compared to 2014 data, in contrast to the almost 50 percent growth rate in China of movie watching.
Given those information, imax CEO Richard Gelfond boldy proclaimed that “China will surpass the US to become the biggest film market in the world in two years.”
Among the factors behind the enviable growth rate of the Chinese movie industry are the opening of 3,035 cinemas in 2015 and the ease of purchasing tickets via online transaction. But, of course, the bigger factor is the sheer number of Chinese potential moviegoers with a population of almost 1.4 billion and the rise of the middle class with more money to spare for rest and recreation activities such as watching movies.
However, the growth of China’s middle class is being threatened by the economic slowdown as the country logged gross domestic product growth of 6.9 percent last year. But NBC pointed out during the last 12 months, the growth of Chinese middle-class consumers was more in the area of sophistication as they became choosier when it comes to brands, likely also reflected in their choice of films to watch.
