Coronavirus deals a blow to China’s film industry
The outbreak coincided with the Spring Festival, one of the most important events in the cultural calendar
By BEIJING
IT WAS MEANT to be one of the most lucrative periods of the year. On January 25th dozens of blockbuster “New Year Films”, or he sui pian, were scheduled to be released in China to coincide with the first day of the Spring Festival, the New Year holiday. The event is a valuable platform for domestic productions, an industry bellwether and indication of audience and government tastes. In 2018 the week-long festival accounted for 5.7bn yuan ($831m), 9.5% of the total box-office takings that year.
By the morning of January 23rd the news of the coronavirus had caused pre-sales to decrease dramatically. “Why don’t the Spring Festival films change their release dates?” started trending on Weibo, a social-media site. “People were returning tickets online,” says Steven Xiang, CEO of Huanxi Media, a production and streaming company, and film-makers began announcing the withdrawal of their films due to “the risk of disease transmission in a confined space”. Cinemas in Beijing were closed indefinitely. The decision will not have been taken lightly: predictions for opening weekend ticket sales were as high as 1.4bn yuan. The share price of Wanda Media, one of the country’s largest film companies, dropped by 7% after the announcement.
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