A year that began with projections that China was on the verge of becoming the world’s largest movie market, the final results show that 2016 might end up being remembered as the year the country’s film sector fell back to earth.
For over 10 years, China’s box office has consistently grown. From 2003 to 2015, the growth averaged 35 percent or more, according to state media regulators. The Chinese market’s huge performance in 2015 (48 percent full-year growth) and an even bigger first quarter this year (50 percent growth; the territory’s first half-billion-dollar movie, Stephen Chow’s The Mermaid), left those who make these predictions in a hurry to increase their forecasts of China’s box office tally.
However, the second quarter showed that there was a 4.6 percent box-office decline compared with the year-ago period. Thanks to the huge first half of 2016 at the box office for the year so far, growth is still up 5 percent but nowhere near the expected powerhouse it was expected to be.
