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Swell: The-Numbers, The Hollywood Reporter
It’s no secret that the highest annual output film industry is Bollywood, not Hollywood. However, Hollywood has had sole control of worldwide box office results since there were corresponding records. Until 2019, the top-grossing film of the year was without exception in English. Box office records tumbled year after year, partly thanks to inflation, partly thanks to advancing globalization and the rapid growth of markets such as China, Brazil and South Korea. Dethroned only the year before last Avengers: Engame Avatar as the best grossing film of all time after nine years.
North America (USA and Canada) remained the undisputed cinema market with the highest sales until 2019, but China quickly caught up. Like many other developments, this one too was accelerated at the speed of light by the extraordinary circumstances in 2020. The corona crisis brought the cinema business to a standstill worldwide in the first half of the year, but while the cinemas in the west never recovered despite a short break in summer and are currently largely closed again, numerous Asian markets were able to return to the pre-corona level achieve, at least with domestic productions, because precious little new came onto the market from Hollywood.
In contrast to the USA and most European countries, Japan, China, South Korea and other Asian countries have got the crisis under control through ultra-strict rules and rigorous tracking and have for the most part been able to return to normality, which did not even exist here in the summer. In Japan, where most cinema screenings don’t even leave spaces between the seats, the anime breaks Demon Slayer: Mugen Train currently all records and even has Hayao Miyazakis Spirited Away Replaced as the most successful film of all time in the country after 19 years. South Korea and China have also had a number of local huge hits since the summer. With a total of $ 2.7 billion in sales China was ahead of North America for the first time in 2020, where movies only grossed $ 2.3 billion. However, the cinema business in China has not been spared either and has been sloshed 70% compared to the previous year. In North America the decline was severe 80%.
The dominance of China can also be seen in the world’s top-selling films from last year. The historical war epic The Eight Hundred is with around $ 483 million Einspiel (almost everything from China) became the world’s most successful film in 2020. The strip, which was the first Asian film to be shot entirely with IMAX cameras, was due to appear in the summer of 2019, but was postponed due to its supposedly critical portrayal of the National Army. Apparently, it didn’t detract from the box office success. The Eight Hundred nevertheless achieved the lowest sales for the world’s number 1 of the year since 1995, when Die hard – now more than ever with $ 366 million. 2020 was also the first year since 2007 in which no film broke a billion US dollars worldwide.
The second most successful film in 2020 also came from China. The episode film My People, My Homeland grossed just under $ 433 million worldwide. Only in 3rd place is with Bad Boys for Life ($ 424 million) a Hollywood production. Was in Germany Bad Boys for Life With around 1.82 million tickets sold, it was the film with the highest number of visitors last year. Christopher Nolans Tenet, the only major Hollywood blockbuster to be released exclusively in theaters during the pandemic, grossed $ 363 million worldwide, which was enough for 4th place.
It is not yet possible to say whether and when Hollywood will recover, and whether there will be box-office results that are comparable to those in the years before the crisis in the next few years. However, the positive examples from China, South Korea and Japan show that a return to previous successes is possible and people still want the cinema experience.
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