Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief China’s remarkable box office recovery this year took a pause on a weekend with no new releases and the quietest attendance levels since January. Next week’s crop of blockbuster holiday releases will show if the latest weekend was aberration attributable to timing. Data from consultancy firm Artisan Gateway showed nationwide box office worth just $25 million – from a population of 1.3 billion people and some 100,000 commercial cinema screens. The figure was the second lowest of 2023 and only fractionally higher than the second week of January, which was a time when China’s post-COVID recovery was only just gearing up and major film releases were targeting the late-January Chinese New Year festivities. Since that time, China’s box office has mostly been on a roll.
