Screen gems?

The box-office surge over the holidays has excited some, but dismayed others, observes Raymond Zhou.

Before Spring Festival arrived on the last day of January, the holiday season was looking rather bleak for China's film industry. Box-office intake for December suffered a 17-percent decline, from 2.55 billion yuan ($421 million) in 2012 to 2.14 billion in 2013, making it the first time in 12 years it failed to maintain its status as the strongest month in box-office revenue.

But when the festival, aka Lunar New Year, rolled along, it was like oil gushing out of a new field. The seven-day holiday (Jan 31 to Feb 6) registered a nationwide gross of 1.4 billion yuan, roughly the return for the entire year of 2004. For the first three days, daily intake exceeded 200 million yuan, and the later decrease was gradual, thus preserving the momentum. Not only did the box-office figure set a record for the holiday, but the number of screenings and the rate of attendance also were unprecedented, jumps of 43 percent and 70 percent respectively over the same period in 2013.