Movie buffs wear masks in a movie theater screening room nearly six months after it closed due to the coronavirus pandemic on July 24, 2020 in Beijing, China.
China news service | China news service | Getty Images
In a year marked by a deadly global pandemic, Japan’s box office set a new record.
An animated film based on a popular manga called “Demon Slayer” became the highest grossing film in the country’s history, surpassing Hayao Miyazaki’s 2001 record of Spirited Away. He sold more than $ 322 million in tickets.
Japan, an island country in East Asia with a population of more than 126 million, had less than 300,000 cases of coronavirus and only saw its box office revenue drop 46% in 2020 to $ 1.27 billion.
For comparison, the domestic box office fell 80% to $ 2.28 billion, as coronavirus cases in the United States have reached 21.6 million since the start of the pandemic. Canada, a contributor to the national box office, saw 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 so that the number of cases has remained low and consumer confidence has remained high.
In places like China, Australia and South Korea, where Covid’s cases have dropped significantly, analysts and operators are seeing the box office recover and prosper.
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 – Asia- Pacific represents 51% of ticket sales. In 2019, these countries accounted for 41%, according to data from Comscore and analytics from Gower Street.
For comparison, in 2019, the box office in the USA and Canada accounted for 30% of global ticket sales. In 2020, that market share dropped to just 18%.
The Asia-Pacific region has made great efforts to fight the coronavirus, including the suspension of travel, the establishment of large-scale tests and contact tracking, the application of masks and the implementation of strict rules of social distance. Regardless of each country’s approach, its ability to reduce coronavirus cases and reopen its economies shows that, if the United States is able to do the same, it can achieve 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 also increasing.
Since August, when most cinemas around the world reopened, Asia-Pacific has accounted for almost 78% of the total box office worldwide.
The reason these countries were able to recover after widespread cinema closures is twofold, said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at Comscore.
First, these countries managed to keep their outbreaks under control by blocking, instituting contact tracking and imposing mask orders. The reduction in the number of cases and the adoption of strict preventive measures have instilled a greater sense of confidence in potential film buffs.
Second, these countries had new non-Hollywood films to release. Internally, the box office stagnated because there was no new product for the public to see. Even when cinemas were reopened with limited capacity, most of the films shown were legacy titles like “Star Wars”, “Jaws” and “Goonies”.
In Asia-Pacific, studios had a steady stream of new content to lure people away from their sofas. And moviegoers showed up en masse.
China had two films that generated 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 consisting of five short stories. Both films were released in the second half of the year.
For comparison, the highest grossing film in the United States and Canada in 2020 was Sony’s “Bad Boys for Life”. 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. He raised $ 204 million during his theatrical screening.
No film released on the domestic market in the second half of the year came close to raising $ 100 million.
Universal’s family animated film “The Croods: A New Age” and Warner Bros. ‘The superhero sequel “Wonder Woman 1984” has already earned less than $ 30 million domestically. “Tenet”, another Warner Bros. title, was released over Labor Day weekend and did not exceed $ 60 million during its theatrical screening.
“Without a doubt, the way back to a normal big-screen market will take a lot of time and a lot of patience,” said Dergarabedian. “But the lessons learned from the example of countries that have recovered strongly in recent months show that a well-managed response from Covid and attractive new films can together provide the spark to spark box office prosperity now and in the future.”
Disclosure: Comcast is the parent company of NBCUniversal and CNBC. “The Croods: A New Age” is an NBCUniversal film.