During the first quarter of the year, China's box office reported accumulated revenue that was higher than the total amount in 2009, drawing speculation that the annual box office takings in 2014 may exceed 30 billion yuan (US$4.8 billion), reports the Chinese-language China Culture Daily.
Figures from entertainment industry news website Entgroup indicated that box offices around the mainland grossed a total of 6.7 billion yuan (US$1.1 billion) during the first quarter of the year, posting a year-on-year growth of 30%.
The number of cinemas has also risen by 325 over the past three months, Entgroup stated, noting that the number of big screens in the country has risen to 20,007.
Such dazzling data is expected to attract investors to the entertainment industry chain, said Song Li, president of a Fuzhou-based cinema chain. In the meantime, box office predictions are emerging as a new profitable business in the Chinese market, he added.
While the United States has a professional website devoted to publishing box office predictions based on data analysis, Du Xiaomeng, public relations manager at Entgroup, told the paper that the volume of data related to the film industry in China was not high enough for researchers to build prediction models on.
Box office predictions are based on analyzing much more complicated market behavior than those in other sectors, such as finance and telecommunications, Du explained. "You cannot just guess that based on intuition," he said.
Echoing Du, Lin Kuei, the department chief at the Fujian Provincial Administration of Radio, Film and Television, said sources of accurate data were necessary for a box office prediction. However, data and information about the film and television industries on the mainland are still not transparent enough for a reliable predictions, Lin added.
"In some small cities, there are still cinemas that will 'steal' box office incomes," Lin said, citing his department's figures, which made it evident that last year, the total box office income in the country had "shrunk" by about 10%.