By JIANG Yunan, HUANG Wenbin
When Jiemian News called a cinema in the coastal city of Xiamen in Fujian Province, the person who answered was so excited that she repeatedly asked if we wanted to book a seat or reserve the entire venue for an event.
The business has been dismal since the March Covid outbreak. The entire month brought in less than 170,000 yuan (US$26,707), just a little more than the single-day high during Chinese New Year a month before. The Qingming long weekend didn’t help. The take of 10,000 yuan a day was only half of the norm for a vacation.
Gross box office nationwide fell 91 percent from February to March. The last time the number was below 1 billion yuan was almost ten years ago, in 2013. Box office at Qingming was only 120 million, also the lowest in ten years.
Since late March, no more than half of cinemas are open on a given day. Xiamen closed all indoor venues on March 21. When cinemas reopened a week later, they were only allowed to operate at 50 percent capacity. Other cities with outbreaks took similar measures.
Even in cities that didn’t see many business closures, cinema attendance is much lower than usual. Single-day numbers in April are even worse than March’s.
Moviegoers don’t have many options. The postponement of new releases has made a bad situation dire. At least four major releases have been delayed. Most cinemas are still running movies released a month ago. Many cinemas have reduced operating hours. Cinemas are trying everything to survive. In non-outbreak cities, cinemas are running immersive role-playing games.
“We open late from Monday to Thursday. No one comes in the morning anyway, so it’s not worth paying the staff to come,” a manager at a Beijing cinema said, adding that labor costs have gone up since extra work is needed for cleaning and temperature checks. “The projectors use a lot of power. I lose money if I only sell a couple of tickets,” he said.
Governments everywhere are supporting small businesses. Xiamen has asked state-backed landlords to waive rents, while Shanghai has also promised loans, subsidies, and rent waivers.
