China’s box office had a terrible 2024

An economic downturn is supposed to drive spending on small luxuries like going out to the movies. But the world’s second-largest economy, currently mired in a slump, is challenging that long-held theory.

An economic downturn is supposed to drive spending on small luxuries like going out to the movies. But the world’s second-largest economy, currently mired in a slump, is challenging that long-held theory. Last year, China’s box office receipts plummeted by 23%, compared to 2023, to just 42.5 billion yuan ($5.8 billion), according to China Film News, an official newspaper under the China Film Administration, citing official numbers released by the group on Wednesday. The takings were 34% lower than in 2019, a record year for the movie industry before a slew of pandemic and economic challenges emerged. The top box office draw last year was “Yolo,” a feminist film starring and directed by Jia Ling, who plays a 30-something woman who loses weight and gains confidence by taking up boxing. The feel-good comedy, in which Jia lost 100 pounds over the course of filming, sold 3.5 billion yuan ($474 million) worth of tickets, according to Maoyan. “Comedy is still the most preferred type of movie for audiences and contributed 36% of the annual box office,” Liu Zhenfei, a data analyst at Lighthouse Research Institute, a market research firm, was quoted by the official Economic Information Daily newspaper on Thursday as saying. But, of course, the overall box office was soft. The annual decline was in part because fewer films were produced. According to official data, just 612 films were made in 2024, compared to 792 the year before. China isn’t the only country seeing a decline in the number of films made. According to ProdPro, which tracks production data, the number of projects actively filming fell by 17% globally in July to September 2024, compared to the same period in 2022, as the industry continues to reel from the impact of 2023’s disruptive Hollywood strikes.