During the “May Day” holiday in China from May 1st to 5th, the box office of movies only reached 744 million yuan (RMB), less than half of the same period last year, marking the lowest in nearly a decade.
The “May Day” holiday has come to an end. According to a report from CCTV News, as of 9:00 pm on May 5th, the box office for this year’s May Day holiday from May 1st to 5th was 7.44 billion yuan.
This year’s May Day movie box office not only significantly dropped compared to last year’s May Day (15.27 billion yuan), but also failed to surpass the 2019 May Day box office before the pandemic. In 2019, the May Day holiday only lasted for four days (May 1st to 4th). According to a report from the Beijing Business Daily at that time, the total box office in China from May 1st to 4th, 2019, reached 1.51 billion yuan.
During this year’s “May Day” holiday, there were originally 13 movies scheduled to be released, but 3 of them announced withdrawal, leaving only 10 movies in theaters.
According to data from “Lighthouse Professional Edition,” by 12:30 pm on May 1st, the total box office for this year’s May Day holiday had just exceeded one billion yuan, the lowest in nearly a decade.
According to a report by “TechCrunch,” overall, this year’s May Day movies lacked top blockbuster movies with strong box office appeal, with most being medium and small-budget films; in addition, there were several remake productions.
Regarding the low performance of this year’s May Day movie box office, netizens generally believe that the main reason is “lack of good movies.”
Internet users left comments jokingly, “This set of May Day movies, it feels like each one is lackluster.” “It’s not that we don’t want to watch, we just don’t know what to watch!” “After looking so much, surprisingly the movie people wanted to watch the most is an animated film.” “It’s not that we don’t support domestic movies, we just genuinely don’t know which one to watch.” “There’s not a single movie I want to watch.” “Current movies, to be honest, are not good, the acting is unnatural, the plot is not good, who would watch it, might as well read novels online.”