Chinese film presales on Maoyan ticketing platform

As of 12 pm on Saturday, the second day for Chinese film pre-sales during Spring Festival, 9 blockbusters have achieved pre-sales of 100 million yuan ($15.56 million), according to ticketing platform Maoyan, indicating a good outlook for China's box office in 2021.

Analysts in the film industry remained optimistic about China's Spring Festival box office as the local governments' call for staying in the city where people work at will make watching films a popular entertainment during the festival holidays.

Detective chinatown 3, which was scheduled to be shown in the 2020 Chinese Spring Festival holidays but was postponed due to the coronavirus, became the most anticipated film for Chinese moviegoers this year. 4.23 million people said they wanted to watch the film, which will be screened from February 12, Maoyan noted.

"It was a pity that I was unable to watch the films I expected last year, so my expectation for this Spring Festival's blockbusters is pretty high. In particular, I am looking forward to comedy films as I hope they could bring happiness and strength for all Chinese people who have all experienced an unforgettable year in 2020," a moviegoer in Beijing surnamed Zhang told the Global Times on Friday.

Outstanding performance of China's box office during the three-day New Year's holidays showed strong demand for watching films. During the three-day holidays, the box office in Chinese mainland hit 1.28 billion yuan, creating a record high during the same holidays.

Due to the coronavirus outbreak in 2020, the box office during last Spring Festival totaled only 23.57 million yuan.

As the virus wreaked havoc on service sector which relies on people-to-people exchange, film industry has suffered great losses in 2020. According to earnings preannouncement by Wanda Film on Friday, the company may loss 6.15-6.95 billion yuan in 2020. Another media giant Huayi Brothers warned a possible loss of 785-982 million yuan last year.

Zhejiang Province-based film director Xiang Kai told the Global Times in a previous interview that he was positive about the this year's Spring Festival box office, and recent sporadic COVID-19 cases across the country will only cause little damage to the film industry compared with that in 2020.