BEIJING: China’s 2025 box office has crossed a crucial milestone during the National Day holiday period, with the year-to-date cumulative gross overtaking 2024’s full-year total of 42.5 billion yuan ($5.96 billion) as holiday releases flood cinemas across the country.
Within days of the start of the holiday frame, this year’s cumulative total reached approximately 42.6 billion yuan, according to the latest figures. The arrival of two new releases on Tuesday — Chen Kaige’s war epic The Volunteers: Peace at Last and the comedy offering Row to Win — and the official start of the eight-day National Day holiday on Oct 1, assisted the box office in surpassing 2024’s total nearly three months before year’s end.
The biggest single driver of this year’s surge has been Ne Zha 2, which opened during the Chinese New Year holiday and has amassed more than 15.4 billion yuan domestically, accounting for over a third of the annual gross to date. Other major contributors include Detective Chinatown 1900 at 3.6 billion yuan, as well as summer box office leaders Dead to Rights at 3 billion yuan and Nobody at 1.6 billion yuan, with the latter becoming the highest-grossing 2D animated film in Chinese history.
September’s standout Evil Unbound — a film depicting the atrocities committed by Japan’s notorious Unit 731 during World War II — closed the month with 1.5 billion yuan, making it the fifth-highest earner of the year.
China’s box office has been navigating a bumpy path to recovery since 2019, when the yearly revenue peaked at a record-breaking figure of over 64 billion yuan. After a 2023 rebound to 54.9 billion yuan, annual grosses retreated again in 2024 to 42.5 billion yuan. There is cautious optimism among industry watchers that 2025 could climb past 50 billion yuan, given the current momentum heading into the final quarter. –The Daily Mail-China Daily news exchange item
