's total box office for the whole year reached 54.915 billion yuan. Domestic movies set a record for a single year's box office. Popular timetables are still the main time for movie viewing. Suspense crime genres are widely favored... On January 1, 2024, Beacon Research Institute and Xinhuanet released 2023 Annual inventory report of the Chinese film market.
core market data - box office attendance multiple data rebound in 2023
report shows that the total box office in 2023 will reach 54.915 billion yuan, an increase of 69% compared with the average value from 2020 to 2022, returning to the level of 2017. The total number of moviegoers reached 1.299 billion, and the average number of moviegoers increased to 2.58.
At the same time, the supply indicators of project registration and release volume have recovered. The box office of domestic films in a single year has exceeded 46 billion yuan, setting a record, and the box office share has reached 84% for four consecutive years. The number of imported films released has rebounded, but the box office volume has declined. None has exceeded 1 billion yuan throughout the year. The average box office per film has hardly returned to the pre-2020 level, and the high point for a single film continues to decline.
The number of screens in the mainland film market will rise to 86,000 in 2023, continuing to rank first in the world. The number of high-value theaters among the 12,700 theaters has rebounded, and the number of theaters with an annual box office of less than 5 million has declined. The theater output value structure is healthier than from 2020 to 2022, and 40 to 60% of theaters are still dependent on popular schedules than the industry average.
Popular schedule performance - the Spring Festival and summer dual schedules helped the market break through 50 billion again
2023 started strongly with the help of the earlier Spring Festival schedule, and the mid-summer schedule was strongly promoted, and the annual cumulative box office was once close to the highest record in the same period in 2019. Although the pace of the fourth quarter has slowed down during the National Day and Lunar New Year periods, the contribution of the 2023 period will still remain at a high level of 68% of the box office for the whole year, and popular periods are still the main time of the year for audiences to watch movies.
Long-term schedules such as summer and Lunar New Year movies have time and conditions to mobilize audiences to watch more movies. In 2023, both the number and frequency of summer moviegoers increased significantly, successfully driving the proportion of "audiences who watched two or more movies" throughout the year to rebound. The top five movies in the 2023 summer season have effectively cultivated the audience's movie-watching stickiness and attracted a large number of new users. At the end of June, "She Disappeared" drove tens of millions of new users to enter the market, quickly heated up the market, and at the same time brought new changes in consumption to the market. .
Excluding popular schedules, the box office in non-scheduled periods in 2023 will have a certain decline compared with 2021. There are an average of 2.4 popular new movies released each weekend in the 33 weekend slots, which have 10,000 viewers, but their effects on boosting the weekend market are mixed. Highly popular Japanese animation, some Hollywood blockbusters and suspenseful crime movies are the three major genres that will effectively drive weekend sales in 2023.
User Portraits of Movie Viewers - The proportion of female viewers has risen to 58% for three consecutive years.
The report analyzed that in 2023, viewers under the age of 25 will still show a downward trend, and the proportion of the main audience in the market between 25 and 29 years old will be stable; 25 The proportion of the main group of women aged to 29 years old has increased, and the proportion of mature women aged 30 and above has increased year after year; the female audience has increased for three consecutive years, and the ratio of women to men is close to 6:4.
Youth animation, romance movies, and suspense crime movies are the main genres that attract young audiences. Young women naturally resonate with films about women, and the supply of this category is relatively small; young men are the main users of superhero movies, and the category as a whole is showing a downward trend and needs alternatives. Third- and fourth-tier cities are important sources of young audiences. The continued development of third- and fourth-tier markets is conducive to the rejuvenation of the market.
In 2023, the proportion of moviegoers in fourth-tier cities has stabilized at 22%, while in third-tier cities has declined slightly. The proportion of viewers in lower-tier cities has remained above 40% nationwide for four consecutive years. The box office in third- and fourth-tier cities has once again exceeded 100 since 2019. billion mark. Compared with 2019, the average number of moviegoers in theater stores across the country dropped by 39%, and the 26% drop in fourth-tier cities was well controlled.
Text｜Reporter Wang Li
Picture｜Lighthouse Research Institute
