Domestic movies set record at box office

With a string of domestic blockbusters, Chinese-language movies scored a new high at the box office in the first half of this year, increasing nearly 80 percent year-on-year, according to the China Film Administration.

Domestic movies grossed 18.3 billion yuan ($2.9 billion) as of June 11, up 79.2 percent year-on-year, said Li Guoqi, deputy director of the administration, during a news conference at the SCO Film Festival.

The first of its kind, the festival — which runs from June 13 to 17 in Qingdao, Shandong province, gathers eight SCO member states and four observer nations to screen around 60 movies from the 12 countries.

Li said the box office total in China has reached 29.4 billion yuan as of June 11, up 18.7 percent year-on-year. Admissions to cinemas totaled 826 million as of June 11, a rise of 16 percent over the same period last year.

As of the end of May, China had more than 10,000 cinemas in urban areas, with 55,063 screens — the most in the world. China’s screen count, about 10,000 more than in North America, included 48,389, or 88 percent, that are 3D screens, according to the administration.