Soaring box office lights up Dragon Boat Festival

The just concluded Dragon Boat Festival – which has cemented itself as a lucrative box office season in recent years – raked in a whooping 909 million yuan ($126.6 million), propelling it to become the second highest-grossing period of all time, only slightly lower than the 2018 figure of 912 million yuan, according to China Film Administration, the country's top sector regulator.

Lost in the Stars, a suspense crime film, topped the festival's box office charts during the three-day Dragon Boat Festival between June 22 and 24, earning a total of 507 million yuan, which accounted for 56 percent of the overall takings. Following it were the romance film Love Never Ends and Hollywood blockbuster Transformers: Rise of the Beasts in second and third place, respectively.

Never Say Never, a movie about a mixed martial arts trainer helping children from the countryside pursue their dreams, took the fourth spot with sales from advanced screenings, while DC's superhero movie The Flash remained in fifth place.

According to statistics from the administration, the holiday period saw 22.5 million tickets sold, with Chinese movies accounting for 80.1 percent of all box office earnings.

A report from movie information tracer Beacon revealed that nearly 68 percent of the audience for Lost in the Stars, a film about a husband searching for his missing wife, were women. Meanwhile, Hong Kong star Chow Yun-fat's gambling-themed movie One More Chance primarily drew men over 30 years old.

Liu Peng, director at the Maoyan Research Institute, said the second day of the festival had higher box office earnings than the first, indicating a changing trend in Chinese moviegoers' consumption habits. Despite most festivals having traditionally seen the highest-grossing single day box office on the first day in the past, a lot of domestic audiences are becoming more cautious and prefer to read online reviews before going to theaters, added Liu.