Holiday box office slumps by 14.7% amid absence of blockbusters

The National Day and Mid-Autumn Festival holiday ended with a disappointing box-office performance, largely due to a lack of blockbuster hits, according to industry insiders. The eight-day holiday, from Oct 1 to 8, generated 1.84 billion yuan ($257.4 million) from 50.07 million tickets, with domestic films making up 98.93 percent of the total revenue. This marks a 14.7 percent decline from the 2.15 billion yuan earned during the same period last year.

According to Maoyan Pro, a film industry tracker, the average ticket price was 36.6 yuan, the lowest in five years. Director Chen Kaige's The Volunteers: To the War, the final installment of a trilogy on the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea (1950-53), led the box office, grossing 450 million yuan.

Evil Unbound, a film about Japan's Unit 731 atrocities, and A Writer's Odyssey II, which follows a writer and his novel's characters, took second and third places, respectively. The comedy All to Win, about a family's dilemma, ranked fourth, while Sound of Silence, focusing on a lawyer handling an anti-fraud case involving the deaf community, secured fifth place.

Despite the release of 13 new movies during the holiday, Evil Unbound had premiered earlier on Sept 18. Lai Li, a market analyst with Maoyan, noted that this year's holiday market was comparatively lackluster due to a lack of compelling blockbusters, despite the diverse range of genres.