Chinese box office falters but those Smurfs don’t seem to care1 min read
Reading Time: < 1 minuteChina’s box office figures are predicted to slow over the next 12 months but in the short term those funny little Smurf creatures are keeping everyone happy.
The created-in-Belgium, franchised-in-Hollywood animated feature picked up an estimated 80 million yuan (8.7 million euros) over its first week of release to top the charts in China.
While that’s a healthy enough figure, the Chinese film industry has this week been getting to grips with estimations that box office figures will rise 30 percent this year – to 13 billion yuan (1.4 billion euros). Not too shabby, one might think, until you run an eye over last year’s figures for China, which saw a 65 percent rise in box office takings.
The figures were published in the Blue Book on Chinese Culture, which is put together by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the Ministry of Culture and Shanghai Jiao Tong University. The reason given for the decline in takings was the lack this year of an Avatar-like, all-conquering blockbuster.
