Chinese films captivate U.S. audience as domestic box office hits record highs
As China’s box office continues to set new records during the Spring Festival holiday, some of the country’s top-performing films are being screened in theaters across major U.S. cities.
A prominent movie theater in downtown Los Angeles is screening the Chinese film “Detective Chinatown 1900” with English subtitles. The film has generated significant excitement within the Chinese American community and has sparked considerable interest among non-Chinese-speaking audience as well.
“I think it’s important to bring different screen writers, different movies from different cultures, so we can immerse ourselves, but I think it would just boil down to the storyline, especially if it’s something different, I think that people would be interested. I’d be curious to look into it as well,” said Vee Carter, Los Angeles resident.
According to film data platform Beacon, the total box office revenue for the 2025 Spring Festival season, including pre-sales, has surpassed 9.2 billion yuan (about 1.27 billion U.S. dollars) as of 16:46 Tuesday.
The figure marks the highest-grossing Spring Festival period in the nation’s cinema history and has solidified China’s position as a global leader in box office revenue for 2025, surpassing North America.
“Part of it has to do with the rapid improvement in Chinese films in the production values of those films, and part of it has to do with telling stories that Chinese want to see, stories about China, stories about Chinese people living their life, and so the markets are not the same as they work,” said Clayton Dube, director at USC U.S.-China Institute.
The numbers show China’s film industry is taking the global lead in box office numbers. Experts foresee a tight competition between the Chinese and American film industries.
“My expectation is that these two markets will remain the two dominant ones. I do expect that the overall size of the Chinese film market is going to increase. I also expect that the Chinese share of the China film market will continue to increase,” said Dube.
