China's summer box office reaches almost 12b yuan

BEIJING -- China's 2025 summer box office reached just over 11.96 billion yuan ($1.68 billion), surpassing last year's summer total, the China Film Administration (CFA) announced on Monday.

More than 100 films spanning a diverse range of genres, including history, animation, comedy, action and suspense, were released in China this past summer, attracting a total of 321 million moviegoers, according the CFA.

China's summer movie season runs from June 1 through Aug 31 and is traditionally one of the country's most lucrative film periods.

The top-grossing title of the summer is "Dead to Rights," a film about the 1937 Nanjing Massacre in East China during World War II -- which raked in 2.89 billion yuan since its July 25 release.

Drawing on verified historical photographs, the story depicts a group of Nanjing residents who hide inside a photography studio and are compelled to help a Japanese military photographer develop his film. When they realize the negatives reveal damning evidence of atrocities across the city, they secretly keep possession of them and smuggle the images to the outside world.

Other top-grossing films of the summer of 2025 include "Nobody," a spinoff of the acclaimed "Yao-Chinese Folktales" animation series; "The Shadow's Edge," a crime action flick starring Jackie Chan; "The Lychee Road," a bittersweet drama set during the Tang Dynasty (618-907) and starring comedian Da Peng; and Universal's "Jurassic World Rebirth."