Asia 2023 Box Office Round-Up: Local Hits, Superhero Fatigue & Why Taylor Swift Is The New Harry Potter

I know I promised to cover Red Sea Fund in more depth in this edition, but we’ve been overtaken by events in the world of funds, at least in Taiwan, so I’m waiting for a few things to shake out before returning to that subject later this week. In the meantime, I’m doing a quick summary of the 2023 year-end box office stories coming out of Asia, which revealed some interesting nuggets about the current state of the theatrical industry in this part of the world.

To start with, I just want to share a short conversation I had with a young restaurant owner in Hanoi, just before Christmas, who unwittingly summarised a lot about the modern-day theatrical experience in developing markets (in fact in lots of markets). I’m guessing he was born mid to late ‘90s. He said that when he was a kid, he used to go to the state-owned Fafilm and Ngoc Khanh cinemas in Hanoi (now defunct since the Korean majors moved in and built shiny new multiplexes) where he most enjoyed watching the Harry Potter films – an experience he remembers as being “completely magical”.

But these days he doesn’t go to the cinema much because nothing looks that appealing and he doesn’t want to spend hours watching a movie, he’s running a restaurant for one thing, although he also confessed to spending far too much time on TikTok. I asked him what was the last film he went to see in a cinema – and he said Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour, which he went to see about six times (!) because he figured buying multiple cinema tickets was cheaper and easier than flying to Singapore to see her in concert.