According to statistics from the National Film Administration, the box office of movies in 2023 was 54.915 billion yuan, of which the box office of domestic films was 46.005 billion yuan, accounting for 83.77%. On January 1, Beacon Research Institute released the "2023 China Film Market Annual Inventory Report". The report shows that in 2023, the per capita frequency of movie viewings has rebounded significantly, and the suspense crime genre is widely favored. With the overall decline of romance movies, the suspense genre It is an effective fulcrum to attract young audiences.
Many core data of box office attendance in 2023 have rebounded. It is estimated that the total number of annual moviegoers will once again exceed 500 million.
The box office in 2023 will surge by 70% compared to the past three years and return to the level of 2017. The number of visitors will increase by 60%, and the average number of moviegoers will increase. to 2.58 times, and it is estimated that the total number of moviegoers in urban theaters throughout the year will once again exceed the 500 million mark. Compared with 2020-2022, the number of medium and high-frequency movie-watching users has increased significantly. Compared with 2019, more low-frequency users who usually rarely watch movies have entered the cinema.
In terms of screening scale, the nationwide screening scale in 2023 will exceed the historical high level in 2019, and the average number of visitors per game has rebounded for the first time in the past four years. The average ticket price throughout the year has remained stable. Film producers in popular schedules have lowered the lower limit of distribution and settlement prices and proactively changed their strategies. The 2024 New Year's Day films have collectively lowered their distribution and settlement prices. According to estimates of the total number of moviegoers, per capita movie consumption in the Chinese movie market has rebounded to 109 yuan.
The number of screens in mainland China's film market will rise to 86,000 in 2023, continuing to rank first in the world. The number of theaters with high production value 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 that in 2020-2022. The dependence of 40 to 60% of theaters on popular schedules is still higher than the industry average.
Domestic films continue to account for 5/6 of the share, and none of the imported films exceeds 1 billion.
The report shows that the supply indicators of project registration and release volume are recovering in 2023. The box office of domestic films in a single year has exceeded 46 billion, setting a record, and the box office share has been exceeded for four consecutive years. Up to 84%. The number of imported films released has rebounded, but the box office volume has declined. None has exceeded 1 billion 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.
In addition, the total want-to-view base in 2023 will reach the highest level in the past four years, the average want-to-view conversion rate will increase, and the average first-day want-to-view rate will increase. The time when viewers realize their "want to watch" is more likely to occur on the weekends of the first week or even the following week. Popular movies with strong fan attributes and popular schedules can still attract viewers to convert "want to watch" on the first day, but for movies with more viewers who are relatively older, the conversion rate of wanting to watch is concentrated on the next day.
The volume of pre-sales for single films has declined, and pre-sales have shifted to weekends.
Compared with 2019, the pre-sales box office of non-scheduled films since 2020 has shown an overall downward trend, with the number of films with pre-sales exceeding 100 million and 50 million on the first day year by year. go lower. In the first half of 2023, driven by popular schedules, the proportion of pre-sales in the market can still remain above 16%. In the second half of the year, the performance of the schedules has been mediocre, and the proportion of pre-sales in the market has repeatedly fallen below 10%. The enthusiasm of the audience for watching movies has decreased, and their plans to watch movies have gradually declined. Lean towards weekends.
For films released on regular Fridays in 2023, the box office contribution in the first and second weeks has rebounded compared to 2020-2022, but it still maintains the backward trend of movie viewing since 2019. Among the three days of the first weekend, Saturday and Sunday had a higher recovery rate, and the average box office contribution on the first Friday lagged behind that on the first Sunday. In the past three years, audiences have gradually formed the habit of proactively asking for true word-of-mouth reviews through public channels, and the trend of watching movies later may continue.
The 2023 schedule contributed nearly 70% of the annual box office. The dual Spring Festival and summer schedules boosted the market and exceeded 50 billion.
The report shows that 2023 started strongly with the help of the earlier Spring Festival schedule, and the summer schedule was strongly promoted in the middle, and the annual cumulative box office once caught up. The highest in history for 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.
has had 9 holiday schedules since 2021. The box office peak occurs on the non-first day. The pre-sale advantage on the first day of the holiday shrinks and the proportion of pre-sales declines. Audiences buying tickets on the same day dominate the market trend of the schedule. In addition to "New Year's Day" and "New Year's Eve" and other nodes with a strong sense of ritual for watching movies, audiences need more motivation to "watch movies immediately".
Long-term schedules such as summer and Lunar New Year 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 theater, quickly heated up the market, and at the same time brought new changes in consumption to the market.
Perhaps because "She Disappeared" attracted a large number of new users to the market earlier than in previous years, the 2023 summer season showed more different movie-watching consumption characteristics. Combined with the high-frequency reviews of the top five summer box office movies, "educational significance" has become a feature of the schedule. In 2023, when parent-child users "watch movies with revenge", in addition to the significance of watching movies for children, more realistic-themed works also have social value for older people and couples beyond the movie itself.
33 There are new movies every week in the weekend slots, and not all of them can bring popularity to the market.
Excluding the popular schedules, the non-scheduled box office 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.
Hollywood blockbusters have been the main force in maintaining the weekend market in the past. The decline in box office volume requires new categories to replace them. The box office of two-thirds of Hollywood series movies in 2023 has declined by more than 60%. The core reason is the inability to attract young audiences. Japanese animation still has continued appeal to young audiences, but compared to Hollywood movies, there are fewer large-scale IPs.
The overall box office of the animated film market in 2023 will be more than twice the average from 2020 to 2022. Both the genre box office share and the average box office data by department are closer to 2019, where "Nezha: The Devil Boy Comes into the World" is located. "Chang'an 30,000 Miles" and "Bear Infested: Bear with Me" ranked second and fifth among animated films in film history. "Deep Sea" and "Suzuya Journey" respectively set new box office records for domestic and imported youth animations. The animation market will recover even more strongly in 2023.
Satisfy the social attributes of movie watching, and popular suspense films are widely favored.
In terms of gender and age distribution, crime types tend to be older men, and suspense types tend to be younger women. In the context of the collective decline in the box office of Hong Kong movies with older men as the core audience , the suspense crime genre has more market vitality. The suspenseful crime genre has a high proportion of double tickets and good social attributes. Popular suspenseful crime films have frequently had a higher share of tickets purchased on the same day than the market, and are favored by more passerby audiences.
In 2023, "selling point posters" for display on ticket purchase platforms will become a must-have publicity material. Taking suspenseful crime films as an example, selling points such as "reversal", "scale" and "truth" are all packaged as promotional phrases, which serve as the most eye-catching information on the posters. From the perspective of audience reviews, the evaluation of crime suspense films is also highest in terms of "characters" and "drama", among which "reversal" is the most prominent core selling point.
In addition to the three popular genres of drama, comedy, and action, the other two among the top five at the annual box office represent the movie viewing trend in the market throughout the year. Entering 2023, crime and suspense will be promoted from high-frequency genres accounting for about 10% of the box office to the top five popular genres of the year. Compared with genres such as action and history that are biased toward older men, the suspense genre is an effective fulcrum for attracting young audiences amid the overall decline of romance movies.
In addition, in 2023, the number of films with over 10,000 screenings will increase, the average box office will increase, and the average number of screening days will extend. However, the average number of visitors during the screening period will overall decrease, which will have a direct impact on the communication effect of screenings. Taking the weekend one week before the screening as the axis, the screening strategy in 2023 has seen a two-way expansion of forward extension and backward continuity to the release. In terms of average attendance per game, not only the relative popularity of the film but also the absolute popularity of the market must be taken into consideration when ordering screenings.
In 2023, the proportion of viewers in lower-tier cities will remain above 40% nationwide for four consecutive years, and the box office in third and fourth cities has once again exceeded the 10 billion mark since 2019. 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. Movie consumption is still mainly based on social attributes, with 70% of the audience going to the cinema together.
Text/Beijing Youth Daily reporter Xiao Yang
editor/Qiao Ying
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