Detective Chinatown 2 was the box office champ during the Spring Festival holiday.

CHONGQING (CQNEWS) -- The Spring Festival film schedule has concluded. Data from Maoyan showed that the movies grossed a total of 5.701 billion yuan in ticket sales during the 7-day Spring Festival holiday, up 66% from last year. The impressive box-office result is more ponderable than last years’ Spring Festival films because of the restriction of ticket subsidy. Operation Red Sea, which took a row piece rate of 11% on Feb. 16, ended up in second place in single day ticket sales since Feb. 19, becoming a dark horse in the fiercely competitive Spring Festival film market.

Create new high under the restriction of ticket subsidy

The total box office of Spring Festival films has surpassed last year’s 3.3 billion yuan from 400 million in 2012. The Spring Festival period is always the most profitable for movies. Under the restriction of ticket subsidy, i.e., the film ticket cost (actual payment by the film viewer) shall not be lower than 19.9 yuan from Feb. 15 to Mar. 2. Besides, the number of subsidized tickets is also under restriction. The number of subsidized tickets for each film shall not exceed 500,000.

The “ticket subsidy” is the subsidy for film ticket rate. For example, the film viewer can buy the film ticket originally priced 50 yuan at an ultra-low price like 9.9 yuan via an APP and the balance will be paid by the e-commerce platform and the producer. This is a way to stimulate the box office for the initial days and increase the row piece rate of films.

It is worth mentioning that the 2018 box office results of Spring Festival films were not adversely affected by the restriction of ticket subsidy but offered comparable performance. The movie Monster Hunt 2 has surpassed 550 million yuan in single day ticket sales, breaking 480 million yuan, the single-day box office record previously held by The Fast and the Furious 8.

Combined sales for of Monster Hunt 2, Detective Chinatown 2 and Operation Red Sea, resulted in more than 1.26 billion yuan on the first day of the lunar year, surpassing last year’s record of 806 million yuan. Data from Maoyan showed that the film has grossed a total of 5.7 billion yuan in ticket sales during the 7-day Spring Festival holiday, up 66% from last year.

Public praise brings success

Different from last year’s open-and-shut box office results, this year’s four blockbusters, Monster Hunt 2, Detective Chinatown 2, The Monkey King 3 and Operation Red Sea strived to catch up and overtake one another every day.

Monster Hunt 2 was the single-day box office champ on the first two days of the lunar year and the first film that topped 1 billion in the Spring Festival film schedule. However, Detective Chinatown 2 overtook it on the fourth day of the holiday based on higher public praise. It became the ultimate winner by 1.88 billion in ticket sales, followed by Monster Hunt 2 who obtained 1.69 billion yuan.

The most interesting thing is the military film Operation Red Sea, directed by Dante Lam, despite of taking only a row piece rate of 11% on the second day of the holiday, kept the second place in ticket sales since the fifth day of the holiday after an astonishing turn-round and has been given an 8.5/10 rating on Douban, a film review platform. It finally ranked third place by 1.19 billion yuan in ticket sales.

Moreover, data from the Film Office of Chongqing Municipal Culture Commission showed that during the week long Spring Festival holiday,-cinemas in Chongqing offered 66,700 rounds of films and received 3.4577 million visitors, grossing a total of 125 million yuan. This was up 15.84%, 58.67% and 65.69% year on year respectively, dramatically refreshing the records of last year.

Chongqing-ers’ favorite film is Detective Chinatown 2, followed by Monster Hunt 2 and Operation Red Sea, and they contributed 41.8612 million yuan, 36.5832 million yuan and 30.315 million yuan respectively for the box office. (Translated by Xu Mengmiao, Fathom Language Limited)