Coronavirus deals a blow to China’s film industry

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In 2018 the week-long Spring Festival accounted for 5.7bn yuan ($831m), 9.5% of the total box-office takings that year

IT WAS MEANT to be one of the most lucrative periods of the year. On January 25th dozens of blockbuster “New Year Films”, or, were scheduled to be released in China to coincide with the first day of the Spring Festival, the New Year holiday. The event is a valuable platform for domestic productions, an industry bellwether and indication of audience and government tastes. In 2018 the week-long festival accounted for 5.7bn yuan , 9.5% of the total box-office takings that year.

Until 1995 mainland cinemas closed for the Spring Festival. Rather than watching government-sponsored blockbusters, audiences preferred to stay home with TV dramas, or to see the arthouse tragedies of Zhang Yimou or Chen Kaige. Thegenre took off in 1997 with Feng Xiaogang’s feel-good comedy “The Dream Factory”. Mr Feng believed a movie should be like “a cup of wine”, giving the audience a good time at the end of the year, and “The Dream Factory” was a hit.

, more serious, patriotic offerings were scheduled for this year’s festival. The victories of the Chinese Women’s Volleyball Team are celebrated in “Leap”, while “The Rescue” is a hymn to the Chinese coastguard, partly funded by the Chinese Ministry of Transport. There is demand for such films from viewers, too. “My People, My Country”, a celebration of the founding of the People’s Republic, broke box-office records in October by making 2bn yuan in ticket sales in its first week of release.

 

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Cinemas in Beijing have been closed indefinitely. This is another chance of an online platform to rise up. They can beat the cinemas and take over the most part of the market due to quarantined, bored populace need entertainment.

Except a huge population explosion in the next year in China.

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