【Epoch Times News, August 16, 2026】
Acclaimed director and actor Stephen Chow’s self-directed film “The Kung Fu Soccer Girls” has been a box office success in mainland China. However, recently there have been repeated reports of cinemas allegedly engaging in “box office theft” through methods like issuing handwritten tickets or blank tickets. In response, Stephen Chow’s agent, Chen Zhenyu, forwarded screenshots of a netizen’s complaint about receiving tickets labeled “A” for “B” and accompanied it with three question marks on the 13th of this month, prompting both the implicated cinema and another film caught up in the controversy to issue urgent responses.
A viewer recently exposed a ticket receipt on social media, claiming that they had purchased tickets for “The Kung Fu Soccer Girls,” but the physical ticket they received displayed the upcoming film starring Shen Teng called “Welcome to the Dragon Restaurant,” with the title altered to “The Kung Fu Soccer Girls” in handwritten text.
Stephen Chow’s agent, Chen Zhenyu, forwarded the screenshot with the caption “???” which public opinion quickly interpreted as Stephen Chow’s team questioning whether “The Kung Fu Soccer Girls” were once again victims of box office theft, reigniting public scrutiny over the issue of receiving tickets for one film after purchasing tickets for another.
The involved cinema in Henan province, “Shangcai Oscar Imax Cinema,” issued an apology statement, explaining that as the viewer arrived more than 20 minutes after the start of “The Kung Fu Soccer Girls,” the system automatically locked the ticketing for that session. In order to accommodate the late viewer, the staff haphazardly printed an unallocated ticket for the nearby and unreserved screening of “Welcome to the Dragon Restaurant” and handwrittenly edited it to reflect “The Kung Fu Soccer Girls.”
The cinema emphasized that this incident was a result of staff errors and had already implemented corrective measures, including offering refunds and rectifying the data for the affected viewers, while extending apologies to both the affected viewers and the film production team. Since the ticket wrongly displayed “Welcome to the Dragon Restaurant,” that film also unexpectedly got entangled in the “box office theft” allegation. The film production team reshared the statement from the cinema, emphasizing that they were never involved in or endorsed any actions related to “box office theft.”
“The Kung Fu Soccer Girls,” directed by Stephen Chow and starring Zhang Xiaofei, Dilireba, and Zhang Yixing, has seen considerable success at the box office since its release in mainland China on July 11, with total earnings reaching 2.3 billion yuan. However, in mid-July, a netizen shared a screenshot after scanning a ticket for “The Kung Fu Soccer Girls,” only to find that the system displayed references to the obscure and unpopular films “Split Flow” and “Flower Dance in the Rain.”
At that time, Stephen Chow’s fan club took the lead in nationwide coordination, collecting physical ticket receipts and backend screenshots from ticket sales, ultimately uncovering that viewers were paying for “The Kung Fu Soccer Girls” tickets, while the front desk surreptitiously printed tickets for unpopular films and recorded them in the system. The cinema employed the unattended unpopular films as “shells” for financial transactions, diverting the box office splits discreetly into accounts associated with the lesser-known films to circumvent revenue sharing mechanisms.
On July 16th, Stephen Chow posted pictures of handwritten tickets for “The Kung Fu Soccer Girls” on Instagram, each accompanied by three question marks, seemingly questioning the film’s potential loss from box office theft. The cinema responded later, attributing it to a “misunderstanding” due to “moist paper not taking ink.” However, this explanation did not quell the suspicions among netizens. The following day, the production company announced the implementation of segmented encryption technology starting from July 17th, halting the issuance of subsequent keys upon detecting anomalies at cinemas, thus severing the chain of box office theft from its technical source and terminating cooperation with violators.
On July 17th, Stephen Chow’s fan club declared with complete evidence that they successfully recovered over 1.6 million stolen box office earnings for the film “The Kung Fu Soccer Girls,” involving more than 90 cinemas, resulting in corrective measures and financial restitution for the implicated cinemas.
The fan club’s post read, “This is a group of ordinary movie fans who, with data, evidence, and enthusiasm, personally reclaimed the complete record of 1.6 million yuan of box office revenue stolen from ‘The Kung Fu Soccer Girls’ from the hands of box office thieves.” At the time, some opinions suggested that the actual amount of box office theft for “The Kung Fu Soccer Girls” could be significantly higher than 1.6 million yuan.