Moviegoers watch Detective Chinatown 3 at a cinema in Taiyuan, North China's Shanxi Province on the first day of the Year of the Ox. Photo: cnsphoto

China's film industry is saw positive growth in the first quarter of the year as cinema goers return to theatres and screenings get back to normal. The sector was hugely hammered by the fallout of COVID-19 in 2020.

Wanda Cinemas, a major cinema operator in China, reports its first quarter net profit at 524 million yuan ($80.81 million), in stark contrast with a 4.729 billion yuan of net loss in the same period last year. In 2020, the company recorded a historical annual net loss of 6.669 billion yuan.

Another film company, China Film Group Corporation, also the largest state-owned film enterprise in China, reports a 387.18 percent growth in its revenue in the first quarter of this year. It has also stopped suffer loss and begun to make profit of around 227 million in the first quarter.

Alibaba Pictures Group, the film company under Alibaba Group, is yet to release its reports, but said that it expects at least 90 percent of the loss it made in the first quarter last year will be offset in the first quarter of 2021.

The robust growth of the China's film companies reflect a rising consumption demand from consumers as life begun to return to normal with the effective containment of COVID-19, Shi Wenxue, Shi Wenxue, a cultural and film critic told the Global Times.

"Cinemas started to resume operations around after the Spring Festival," Shi said, "and with the prevention measures eased down, the rising demand from the cinema has also helped the production companies to resume business."

Shi also forecasts that the upcoming May Day Holiday that falls between May 1 and May 5 will generate record-breaking revenue for cinemas and box offices for movies that are on show.

Several movies have generated impressive box offices so far this year, including the second screenings of old movies. It took just two days and four hours for Avatar to pass the 100 million yuan box office record, bringing the movie back to the highest-grossing films of all time. And The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring which made 54.6 million yuan as of Tuesday.