Nowadays, if you spend dozens of dollars to walk into the cinema, you will not only get a movie, but also a reward for human bewilderment.

The lights have just gone out, and the immersive sense of watching the movie has not yet come, and the rustling of snack bags, the discussion of the plot in the neighboring seats, and the sudden light of the mobile phone make people play first.

The movies that are actually staged often make people suspect that they are joking: realistic films make people suspect that the screenwriter has never eaten grains; the jokes of comedy films are all overdrawn in the trailer; not to mention romance movies, which are so embarrassing that people cut out three bedrooms and one living room.

Even the summer of 2025, which is known as the best word-of-mouth in the past decade, has not been able to completely win back the audience who were dissuaded by the bad experience, and the box office of many blockbusters has fallen short of expectations, and the forecast data has been repeatedly lowered.

Going to the cinema to watch movies seems to be really less and less attractive to Chinese.

1. Cinemas are expanding, but the audience is decreasing sharply

In 2025, the crazy red, yellow and blue takeaway war will be scattered all over the sky, crazy subsidies, and wool will be sent to the door for people to pick. Some people say that the post-00s have finally caught up with a wave of dividends of the times. But in fact, the film industry played the game of throwing money for the market.

Going back in time to 2014, Maoyan and Taopiao entered the game, and used tickets to make up for the movie ticket price to single digits. At the most exaggerated time, "Transformers 4" even sold for only one dollar [1], and China was pulled into the era of 9 yuan 9 and 19 yuan 9.

The low price not only lowered the threshold, but also developed the habit of watching new movies in theaters at any time, and pushed the box office all the way to an all-time high of 64.149 billion yuan in 2019 [2]. However, the sudden outbreak of the epidemic brought this craze to an abrupt end, and the box office plummeted to 20.31 billion yuan in 2020 [2].

Even after the resumption of work, the audience has not been able to fully return. By 2024, there will be 13,000 theaters and 81,000 screens nationwide, but the total box office will only be 42.5 billion yuan, a three-third decrease from 2019, and even less than 43.8 billion yuan in 2015 [2]. You know, the number of theaters and screens in 2015 is less than half of that in 2024.

Although the cinema is still expanding, except for a few popular films that can fill a few more halls when they are released, the rest of the time is often deserted. In the huge venue, there are few spectators, and there are many more empty seats than people watching movies.

In 2024, the annual attendance rate of cinemas across the country will fall to an all-time low of 5.7%, which means that a movie in a 100-person theater may only be watched by five or six people. Even in the four prime time, except for the Spring Festival stalls of the MVP of the year, the rest cannot retain the audience.

The Chinese New Year file created by the golden duo of Feng Xiaogang and Ge You [3] is now like an old actor who has been gradually forgotten, and the attendance rate has been sluggish since 2020, and in 2024, even if there are word-of-mouth works such as "Good Things" and "Little Me", it can only usher in a sparse audience, with an attendance rate of only 4.2%.

It is also difficult to reproduce the excitement of the past in the summer season. Even in the summer of 2023, which is the highest box office in history, the box office of "All or Nothing" and "She Disappeared" soared after its release, and the attendance rate of the entire schedule was still only 11.9%.

This year's summer "Nanjing Photo Studio", "Langlangshan Little Monster" and many other films rely on word-of-mouth to counterattack, Douban scores have risen to 8, and box office revenue has also risen, but the overall attendance rate of theaters is still sluggish, only 6.9%. A good movie is coming, but the audience has not come back.

As for the National Day file, the attendance rate is like a roller coaster. As the main theme blockbusters of the hit models have joined the Spring Festival and summer files, the excitement of the National Day file is no longer what it used to be, and the attendance rate has never exceeded 15% after 2022.

But at the same time, the construction of cinemas is still popping up one after another like new buildings in the city. When there are fewer and fewer people watching movies and more and more screens, what are the newly opened cinemas relying on to survive?

3. Cinemas, relying on schedules and explosive models to continue their lives

Watching movies now is no longer a whimsical choice. There is no hot search push, no Amway screen swipe in the circle of friends, no short video with "laughter and tears" expressions, and most people are not even interested in opening the ticketing app.

Spontaneous movie viewing has long been a thing of the past. In the long run, cinemas can only pin their hopes on a few prime time periods and blockbusters.

Since 2014, the box office has always been the ballast stone of the annual market, accounting for more than half; after 2022, it firmly accounts for about 70% [2]. However, the box office of different schedules is as different as the attendance rate.

In the past, the Spring Festival stall, the National Day file, and the summer stalls were still three legs at the box office. But since 2018, the Spring Festival stall has left its opponents in one fell swoop and become the only supergiant

The seven-day box office of the Spring Festival in 2018 reached 5.771 billion yuan, sending February of that year to the throne of more than 10 billion yuan in a single month in Chinese film history. Looking at this year, thanks to "Nezha 2", the box office in February has soared to 16.09 billion yuan [2].

However, the Spring Festival stall seems to have a vast "money scene", but in fact it is more like a big gamble. Those who can stand at the poker table are all high-investment and strong lineups. For example, "Man Jiang Hong" directed by Zhang Yimou and starred in the all-stars, "Fengshen 2", which smashed hundreds of millions of yuan, and "The Wandering Earth", which has its own national topicality, etc.

But the audience often has only one patience for the Spring Festival. According to data from the Lighthouse Research Institute, during the Spring Festival in 2018~2025, more than 80% of the audience watched only one movie [4].

The film producer had to start "rolling" from the pre-sale period: real money to buy films, celebrities to turn to roadshows, and short video platform marketing was overwhelming, in order to compete for the only opportunity.

The winning films often take the annual ticket crown through train, and even if they are a little close, they can still rank in the top five at the box office. Under the pressure of the strong and the strong, other films will inevitably flee. Eight films will be released during the Spring Festival in 2024, and four will eventually be withdrawn midway [5].

It is worth mentioning that the Spring Festival champions in previous years have never accounted for more than 15% of the annual box office, but in 2025, the movie "Nezha 2" alone will swallow nearly 40% of the box office at the end of the summer season. Maoyan Research Institute also pointed out that more than 60% of the audience has not entered the cinema since watching "Nezha 2" [6].

A similar "Matthew effect" is equally obvious throughout the year, and the annual box office is also constantly concentrating on the head films

In 2014, the top 50 films can take away 80%~90% of the box office; by 2024~2025, only the top 20 films can take away 60%~80% of the box office. The box office share of the top five films has also climbed from 20% in the past to 30% or more.

In other words, the cinema is becoming more and more like a head club: a few Big Macs hold up the market, and the rest of the films can only share the scraps in the corners

But the problem is that not every schedule is a hit. In the summer of 2025, Jiang Wen's "You Can Do It! You Go Up!" and Chen Kexin's "Sauce Garden Lane: Unsolved Case", there is no shortage of directors, lineups, and topics, but they both hit the box office.

Even Dapeng, in the face of the box office of his new work "Lychee in Chang'an", couldn't help but post on Weibo wondering: Why is everyone reluctant to watch movies?

4. Chinese, why don't you go to the cinema?

In fact, it's not that Chinese people don't like to watch movies, but that the price of entering the theater is too high. People who were originally willing to buy tickets were persuaded by bad experiences again and again, and finally had to retreat.

In some cinemas, it is difficult to have a good impression, the seats are as hard as torture instruments, the cracks in the chairs are as dirty as trash cans, and the screen is not much larger than their own projector.

What's even worse is that even though I bought the same movie ticket, it was like breaking into someone else's living room by mistake. It's not just the mobile phone that doesn't mute, but also the neighbors who love to answer questions, the busy wow dubbing artist and the commentator who never goes offline. Even if you bite the bullet and endure it, when the movie is over, your heart is still cold:

The movie being screened is like online dating, and it dies directly after its release.

Many movies, either the trailer and the feature film can't be hit; or the picture special effects seem to be temporarily rubbed, like the rough visual presentation of "Fengshen 2" at the beginning of the year was complained about like "Smurfs", which made the audience's pupils tremble.

Although some movies are full of picture quality, they can guess the ending as soon as they finish watching the beginning, like putting a Michelin on a plate, but it is an old rice in the mouth. What's even more blocking is that the cliché plot has to be encouraged and sensational, and it is no wonder that it is complained about:

At countless nodes, I felt that the director was reminding me fiercely whether it was time to cry or laugh, but I really couldn't cry or laugh at all. Making movies should tell good stories, and don't be so possessive of the audience's brain.

After all, time is the most expensive thing in this era. 24 hours a day, most of it is cut off by work, study and sleep. In the remaining free time, watching a variety show or watching a short drama at home is more cost-effective than spending two hours sitting in a movie hall.

Not to mention the price of the cinema, the ticketing app is marked with a low price, and when you click in, you find that the lowest price is marked in the corner seat, which is a bait, and the good position in the middle is not very expensive, only more expensive.

According to the data of Lighthouse Pro, as of the end of August 2025, the average price of movie tickets in first-tier cities has reached 49.6 yuan, which is 16% more expensive than in 2014; third- and fourth-tier cities have risen even more, approaching 30% and 35% respectively, and the average price of about 42 yuan has been on par with second-tier cities.

What's even more heartbreaking is that theater audiences are getting older, but newcomers are not keeping up. According to data from the Maoyan Research Institute, the average age of summer audiences in 2021 was 27.7 years old, and by 2025, it has become 32.5 years old [6].

For many young people, going to the cinema is no longer a compulsory course for youth, neither a necessity for socializing, nor is it difficult to use it as a standard process for dating, but a dispensable one among many entertainment methods.

The movie "One by One" once said: After the invention of film, human life has been extended at least three times longer than before. But the reality is that walking into the cinema is more and more like opening a blind box, and it is most likely a bad movie, and it is not the width of life, but the extra two hours on the screen.