At the Tokyo International Film Festival’s TIFFCOM market, the launch of the *Blue Book of China Film 2025*, jointly edited by Peking University’s Chen Xuguang and Zhejiang University’s Fan Zhizhong, framed Chinese cinema at a crossroads between crisis and renewal.
According to the report, annual box office revenue in 2024 fell 22.6% year-on-year to RMB 42.5 billion ($5.75 billion), with admissions down 28.6% despite 91,000 active screens. Audiences have increasingly fragmented across short-form video, gaming, and streaming platforms, while the average viewer age continues to rise.
Despite these challenges, mid- to low-budget realist dramas, family-themed films, and comedies have helped sustain theatrical momentum. The 2025 edition of the Blue Book identifies several dominant trends shaping the industry.
Female-directed and family-ethics dramas have reshaped mainstream storytelling through films such as *YOLO*, *Something Wonderful*, and *Like a Rolling Stone*. Comedy remains a strong genre, accounting for 36% of box-office revenue in 2024, driven by popular titles like *Successor* and *Johnny Keep Walking*.
Documentaries are signaling a revival of cultural and social nonfiction, with noteworthy films including *Caught by the Tides*, *The Sinking of the Lisbon Maru*, and *Ms. Hu’s Garden*.
In addition, AI-driven production and film-game convergence have emerged as new engines of growth. Projects such as *Black Myth: Wukong* and *Ne Zha 2* blend cinematic storytelling with interactive structures, showcasing innovative possibilities for the future of Chinese cinema.
The Blue Book concludes that while record-breaking grosses, like those of *Ne Zha 2*, demonstrate significant commercial potential, the future of the industry depends on diversified financing, balanced production scales, and greater integration of AI and animation into industrialized production.
Chen Xuguang closed the presentation by posing critical questions: Can China maintain its box-office peaks? Can it globalize its myths? And ultimately, can it build its own large-scale creative ecosystem comparable to Disney?
During the post-presentation Q&A, Chen addressed the industry’s financial volatility, highlighting that rising budgets have sharply increased risks and created an imbalance between investment and returns. He urged studios to move toward sustainable “serial operation” by diversifying revenue streams through licensing, merchandising, and cultural-tourism tie-ins, while supporting a stable ecosystem of medium- and low-budget films.
This strategic approach, Chen suggested, is essential for fostering a resilient, innovative, and globally competitive Chinese film industry.
https://variety.com/2025/film/markets-festivals/ne-zha-2-china-film-blue-book-2025-tiffcom-1236567714/
