A new report by the UK analytics firm Gower Street suggests that China has become the first global film market to make a “full box-office recovery” this week.
The firm uses five targets to track how a country's box office bounces back, beginning with stage one, when a majority of cinema halls are ready to resume operations, to stage five, when weekly collections match those in the past. When a market reaches this stage, it “should react as normal, with an ebb and flow dependent on the release calendar”, according to the report.
Going by these parameters, in this new post-COVID world, the Chinese box office had to reach weekly earnings of $184 million. A news report in Variety.com has revealed, using data from Comscore Movies, that the Chinese box office was able to reach this target number in only five days, beginning from Friday 21 August.
The national numbers for the week are $252 million, 18% more than the same week in 2019, when the national numbers were $209 million. Though cinemas are currently allowed to sell tickets for only half the seats, more than 90% of cinemas are now open.
The resurgence of the Chinese box office is a hopeful trajectory for the rest of the global market which is slowly opening up around the world. The Grower Street report also states that nearly 65% of the global cinemas are now back in business. Sales have been increasing weekly.
Christopher Nolan’s Tenet (2020) is due to be released in China on 4 September, while his older film Inception (2010) will be re-released today. The live action version of Mulan (2020) by Disney is also expected to be a draw when it is expected to be released later this year.