Affiliates are wearing face masks in a movie theater almost six months after its closure due to the July 24, 2020 coronavirus pandemic in Beijing, China.
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In a year hit by a deadly global pandemic, the Japanese box office set a new record.
An animated manga based on a popular manga called “Demon Slayer” became the highest grossing film in the country’s history, surpassing Hayao Miyazaki’s “Spirited Away” record in 2001. It sold over $ 322 million in sales. tickets.
Japan, an island country in East Asia with a population of over 126 million, has had fewer than 300,000 cases of coronavirus and has seen its box office revenues fall by 46% in 2020, up to $ 1.27 billion.
For comparison, the domestic box office collapsed by 80% to $ 2.28 billion, as coronavirus cases in the United States have exceeded 21.6 million since the beginning of the pandemic. Canada, which contributes to the internal box office, has registered less than 645,000 cases, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
Japan is just one of many countries in the Asia-Pacific region of the world that have managed to navigate the coronavirus pandemic in such a way that the number of cases remains low and consumer confidence remains high.
In places like China, Australia and South Korea, where Covid cases have dropped significantly, analysts and operators see the speakers recover and develop.
In fact, Asia Pacific saw its market share increase in 2020. While the global box office was significantly lower last year – about 70% of what it was in 2019, or about 12.4 billion dollars – Asia Pacific accounts for 51% of ticket sales. In 2019, these countries accounted for 41%, according to Comscore data and Gower Street analysis.
For comparison, in 2019, US and Canadian tickets accounted for 30% of global ticket sales. In 2020, the market share fell to only 18%.
Asia Pacific has made strong efforts to combat coronavirus, including suspension of travel, large-scale testing and follow-up of contacts, mandating masks, and implementing strict rules of social distance. Regardless of each country’s approach, their ability to reduce coronavirus cases and reopen their economies shows that if the US could do the same, it could see similar results.
So far, the response to coronavirus in America has been slow and cases continue to rise to historic levels, with hospitalizations and deaths increasing.
Since August, when most theaters globally were reopened, Asia Pacific has accounted for almost 78% of all tickets worldwide.
The reason these countries have managed to return after the large-scale closure of theaters is twofold, said Paul Dergarabedian, a senior analyst at Comscore.
First, these countries managed to control their outbreaks by blocking, establishing contact tracking and enforcing mask warrants. The decrease in the number of cases and the adoption of strict preventive measures have created a greater sense of confidence in cinephile potentials.
Second, these countries had to release new, non-Hollywood films. Internally, the box office was blocked because there was no new product for the public to see. Even when cinemas reopened at limited capacity, most of the movies aired were old titles such as “Star Wars,” “Jaws,” and “Goonies.”
In Asia Pacific, studios have had a steady stream of new content to draw people away from their couches. And moviegoers turned out en masse.
China had two films that grossed more than $ 400 million at the local box office: “The Eight Hundred,” a war drama set in the 1930s, and “My People, My Homeland,” a comedy film made up of five short stories. Both films were released in the second half of the year.
For comparison, the highest grossing film in the US and Canada in 2020 was “Bad Boys for Life” by Sony. The action film starring Will Smith and Martin Lawrence is the third film in the “Bad Boys” franchise and was released in January, before the virus began to spread in the United States. It raised $ 204 million during its theatrical release.
No domestic film released in the second half of the year reached nearly $ 100 million.
The Universal family animated film “The Croods: A New Age” and Warner Bros. The sequel to superhero “Wonder Woman 1984” both grossed less than $ 30 million domestically. “Tenet”, another Warner Bros. title, was released on Labor Day weekend, and did not exceed $ 60 million during its theatrical performance.
“Undoubtedly, the road back to a normal big screen market will take a long time and a lot of patience,” Dergarabedian said. “But the lessons learned from the example of countries that have returned strongly in recent months show that a well-managed Covid response and appealing new films can provide the spark to spark box office prosperity now and in the future.”
Disclosure: Comcast is the parent company of NBCUniversal and CNBC. “Croods: A New Age” is an NBCUniversal movie.