China Focus: Holiday releases aim for record-breaking box office performance

At least 17 new movies will be screened on the Chinese mainland during this year's May Day holiday period from April 29 to May 3.To get more news about new chinese movies, you can visit shine news official website.

The five-day holiday could potentially be one of the most lucrative May Day holidays, as this is the first such holiday after China optimized its epidemic response late last year.

The presale box office of the new releases punched through the 200 million yuan (around 28.9 million U.S. dollars) mark on Thursday, the China Film News, an industry publication under the China Film Administration, said in a post on China's Twitter-like platform Sina Weibo, citing box office tracker Dengta Data.

Industry optimists projected a box office gross of up to 3 billion yuan over the period, the China Film News said Monday.
A cornucopia of movies awaits film enthusiasts, with genres ranging from action, comedy and crime to suspense, romance and animation.

"Born to Fly," a "Top Gun"-style production, turns a rare spotlight on the test pilots of the country's Air Force. It tells a story of how elite pilots rubbed shoulders with death during the test flights of China's cutting-edge fighters to help collect data under extreme conditions.

The movie smashed the presale record for the May Day holiday period over the past five years on Tuesday with a box office of more than 70 million yuan, according to China Film News. As of Friday morning, the total revenue, including presale earnings, amounted to 121 million yuan, according to Dengta Data.

The movie is considered the most anticipated film of the holiday period. Netizens were wowed by its razzle-dazzle and expressed their excitement in the comment section of the film's official account on Sina Weibo. "My face has been wet with tears," wrote one netizen.

On the second spot of the Dengta Data box office chart for new releases is "All These Years," a romance drama adapted from a namesake novel by Liu Wanhui. Together with presale revenues, the movie has raked in 40.23 million yuan at the box office.

"Godspeed," a domestic road comedy, came in third on the leaderboard with a box office of 23.54 million yuan as of Friday morning.

According to a poll by Dengta Data involving six leading media outlets, the median estimates for box office revenue were 942 million yuan for "Born to Fly," 519 million yuan for "Godspeed," and 318 million yuan for "All These Years" during the holiday period.

RECOVERY OF MARKET

Market optimism is not without basis. Over the course of the Spring Festival holiday, Chinese cinemas recorded a staggering 129 million attendances, resulting in a combined box office revenue of 6.76 billion yuan in just seven days.

It was the second highest grossing period to date on the movie season's tally, indicating a resilient upward momentum of the market following a hibernation forced by COVID-19, analysts said.

March is traditionally a slow month for foot traffic at cinemas, yet this month saw 35 new movies hit theaters on the Chinese mainland. These movies generated a combined box office revenue of 1.9 billion yuan, up 108.87 percent year on year, according to the China Film News.