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Revenues touched 6.96 billion yuan ($1.08
billion) over the six days to Wednesday midday, live data from
ticketing platform Maoyan Entertainment shows, with higher
prices padding the total and Chinese productions dominating
screens.
That haul topped the 2019 record of 5.9 billion yuan, bringing
year-to-date revenues in excess of 10 billion yuan, state media
said, in a movie market that last year surpassed the United
States as the world's biggest.
Investors welcomed the boom, pushing shares of entertainment
firms such as IMAX China Holding Inc and Alibaba Pictures Group
Ltd, to multi-month highs on Tuesday after the crisis-induced
slump through much of last year.
"It's pent-up demand, due to the virus controls and also higher
ticket prices, that is behind the hefty box-office sales," said
a user on China's Twitter-like Weibo, nicknamed Tianjin Share
Guru.
The top draw was "Chinatown Detective 3", a buddy action comedy
set in Japan's capital of Tokyo, with sales of 3.4 billon yuan,
while "Hi Mom", a time-travel comedy about parenthood and family
relations, came in second, raking in 2.4 billion.
Adventure film "A Writer's Odyssey" took third place, followed
by two Chinese cartoons.
The moviegoing frenzy was fuelled by workers and office staff
who heeded the call from authorities to stay in the cities where
they were based, rather than travelling home, in a bid to rein
in a resurgence of infections that began in January.
Transport ministry data shows passenger trips fell 70%
nationwide over the two weeks before the Lunar New Year, which
began on Friday, from the corresponding period two years ago.
Some moviegoers got free tickets from local governments such as
that in the business hub of Shanghai.
But not everyone was happy, as tickets could be hard to get and
more expensive than usual, partly since most cinemas halved
occupancy as part of crisis curbs.
Although prices averaged about 50 yuan, up from 45 yuan during
the 2019 holiday period, they often exceeded 70 yuan and even
reached 150 yuan.
"Chinatown Detective was sold at 143 yuan, isn't that robbery?"
said one movie fan on Weibo.
($1=6.4542 yuan)
(Interactive graphic tracking global spread of coronavirus:
https://graphics.reuters.com/world-coronavirus-tracker-and-maps)
(Reporting by Chen Aizhu in Singapore; Editing by Clarence
Fernandez)
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