Movie milestone as China's 2023 box office hits 30 billion yuan

The box-office revenue of the Chinese mainland market has hit the 30 billion yuan (around $4.2 billion) mark as of July 14, according to a China News Service report which quoted statistics from the film marketing and data platform, Beacon.

Domestic productions have been leading the list of this year's highest-grossing movies, as iconic director Zhang Yimou's "Full River Red" topped the charts with 4.54 billion yuan (around $640 million) in earnings, followed by "The Wandering Earth II," the highly acclaimed Chinese sci-fi blockbuster, and the suspense thriller "Lost in the Stars."

The country's three-month-long summer movie season, which runs from June 1 to August 31 and coincides with the school summer holidays that often see takings swell, recorded box-office earnings of 8 billion yuan (over $1.1 billion) as of July 15.

Contributions came from both Chinese animated films like "Chang'an," which racked up 600 million yuan (approximately $84 million) since hitting theaters on July 8, as well as action-packed blockbusters from overseas like the highly anticipated "Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One."

Tom Cruise's "Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One" racked up 100 million yuan (around $14 million) in box-office takings just on the second day of its release on Saturday. The movie is set to compete with the blockbuster Chinese fantasy epic "Creation of The Gods I: Kingdom of Storms" in a few days, which stars Chinese-American Fei Xiang, one of the biggest pop icons in China during the 1980s,who is busy promoting this ancient Chinese novel-based film after expressing a willingness to contribute more to the inheritance and advancement of the best in traditional Chinese culture.