China 2025 First Half Box Office & Upcoming Films
Streamlined is back after a summer break during which you may have noticed that the Streamlined Global website had a makeover. The site is designed to help indie producers, sales agents, buyers and programmers with their work in Asia, Middle East and Africa and I’d love to hear your thoughts on which elements of the site are useful or what else you would like to see. More upgrades will be happening over the summer.
Two sections of the site have recently been updated – Funding News and Project Markets. This link takes you through to all the recent funding announcements in Asia and the Middle East, including Busan’s Asian Cinema Fund, Doha Film Institute and the Singapore International Film Festival film fund. This link takes you to all the recent project market line-ups across the region, including Locarno Open Doors, Venice Gap Financing Market, Shanghai’s SIFF Project and Amman Film Industry Days in Jordan.
Streamlined also carries some rolling lists you may find useful – Southeast Asia Projects in the Pipeline and China’s release schedule for imports and co-productions. A new Festival Dates list has recently been added with details of film festivals, markets and TV events taking place this year across Asia, Middle East and Africa (with the biggest European and North American events also listed).
Streamlined Guides will be back next week with the long-awaited report on Asian Co-Production Funds, which will be published in two parts. Huge apologies for the delay – it has been an epic piece of research that has given me a whole new appreciation of the complicated life of an independent producer, some of whom could have made an entire film in the time it’s taken me to research this report.
For this first newsletter following the summer break, Streamlined is looking at half-year box office results for mainland China, while upcoming editions will look at how box office is faring so far this year in South Korea, Japan, India and Southeast Asia.
Imports Stage A Comeback In Muted Post-Ne Zha 2 Period
China’s box office recovery since the pandemic has been uneven to say the least – after plummeting to $2.8bn (RMB20bn) in 2020, it jumped up to $6.6bn (RMB47bn) in 2021, was down again to $4bn (RMB30bn) during the Omicron variant in 2022, up again to $7.6bn (RMB55bn) in 2023, then down again to $5.9bn (RMB42.5bn) in 2024. It has yet to regain the dizzy heights of 2019 when it reached a record $8.95bn (RMB64.3bn).
This year seems to be continuing the zigzag pattern with box office for the first half of the year up by 22.9% to $4.1bn (RMB29.2bn), compared to the first half of 2024, according to figures from theatrical consultancy Artisan Gateway. Of course, most of that growth was driven by just one title: animation behemoth Ne Zha 2, released in February over Lunar New Year.
“Ne Zha 2 contributed 52.8% of the first half tally, with $2.1bn (RMB15.4bn), but post Chinese New Year, no films either local or import have grossed more than RMB500m,” says Artisan Gateway president Rance Pow.
However, Pow is optimistic about Hollywood and other imports: “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, a major Hollywood franchise sequel, topped the second quarter with $63.2m (RMB455.2m), and over subsequent weeks imports (of all origins) have represented a majority of the Top Ten titles.”
Artisan Gateway figures also show that Chinese-language films increased box office by 37.4% year-on-year to $3.7bn (RMB26.7bn) in the first half of 2025, while imported films declined by 44.4% to $357.2m (RMB2.5bn). However, the figures are skewed by Ne Zha 2’s outsized success and the fact that Hollywood had a relatively big hit in the first half of last year with Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, which grossed $133m (RMB956m).
Chinese audiences obviously still love monsters, because the biggest Hollywood film so far this year is Jurassic World Rebirth, released at the beginning of the second half on July 2, which has already overtaken Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning with a gross to date of $68.8m (RMB493.7m).
