Han Haoyue | ArticleThe May Day holiday in 2025 will end, and various industries will release holiday consumption data. According to data from the National Film Special Fund Office, the national box office revenue was 747 million yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 51% and a new low in nearly eight years. According to Maoyan Professional Edition data, the total number of viewers during the viewing period was 18.897 million, a year-on-year decrease of 50%. The box office revenue and total number of moviegoers were cut in half, causing the film industry to feel a chill during this holiday.

The pre-sale box office, first day box office, and total box office are all much lower than the same period last year. The film market suffered a "triple blow" during the May Day holiday, and the decrease in average ticket prices and individual film release prices to rescue the market did not prevent the cliff like decline of the May Day film market; The popularity of the Spring Festival season has overdrawn the audience's enthusiasm for watching movies, which is only one aspect. The lack of truly compelling top works during the May Day season is the main reason why audiences are unwilling to enter the cinema; In addition, the popularity of commercial performances such as concerts, music festivals, and plays has also diverted cinema audiences.

The third extension of the key to the Spring Festival movie "Ne Zha: The Demonic Children Roar in the Sea" to May 31st and its participation in the May 1st competition objectively indicates the lack of top works with obvious competitive advantages in the May 1st competition; The box office of movies during the Spring Festival period reached 9.51 billion yuan, and the box office of "Ne Zha: The Demonic Child Roars in the Sea" exceeded 15.8 billion yuan, further highlighting the dismal performance of the May Day period; For audiences who have experienced the Spring Festival season and the popularity of "Ne Zha: The Sea of Demons", if cinemas and works cannot provide sufficient emotional value and topic discussion, they will adopt a wait-and-see attitude. It's not that the audience doesn't like watching movies, but that movies themselves cannot break through the slump.

The Dumpling Queen became the box office champion of the May Day holiday with a score of 192 million yuan, but this result fell far short of expectations. The Dumpling Queen "can be classified as one of the popular" women's films "in recent years, but its biographical genre and unfamiliar story prototypes for young audiences, including relatively conservative creative techniques, have led to a lack of popularity that phenomenal films should have, limiting its box office growth. On the other hand, female films such as "Hot and Hot" and "Good Things" are much stronger in terms of emotional resonance, emotional endorsement, and topic discussion than "Dumpling Queen".

During the May Day holiday, the film market was quiet, but the cultural and tourism market was booming. According to data from the data center of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, there were 314 million domestic trips during the 5-day holiday, a year-on-year increase of 6.4%; The total expenditure of domestic tourists on travel was 180.269 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 8.0%. In terms of commercial performances, the data released by many places are very impressive: the box office revenue of commercial performances in Beijing is about 242 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 29%; The box office revenue of commercial performances in Shanghai was about 163 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 59.41%, and the number of viewers for commercial performances in Jiangsu Province reached 28510000 yuan, box office revenue of 190 million yuan, driving direct consumption of 1.3 billion yuan in cultural tourism

Experts have stated that the cultural and tourism industry has more innovative actions in terms of experience and promotion than cinemas, including concerts, plays, and other performance markets. The program selection is also more diverse, therefore, the proportion of watching movies as the preferred consumption is decreasing. Objectively speaking, during this year's May Day holiday, the cultural and tourism market, especially the commercial performance market, has indeed put in a lot of effort in attracting tourists. The overall entertainment consumption during the holiday period and the poor performance of the film industry have left a deep impression and highlighted some issues worth exploring.

As a highly regarded product in the entertainment industry, movies have always been regarded as the "pearl of the entertainment industry". Due to its profound impact on social and cultural life, the unique charm of movies has always been emphasized and valued. But what should the film business do? The Chinese film industry has never truly found an ideal model and development pattern, sometimes exceptionally prosperous, and sometimes extremely quiet, which has become the norm of the film industry. The situation of this year's May Day holiday once again exposed the difficulties that the film industry faces in product planning, work creation, and schedule supply. These problems have more or less solutions, but the difficulty lies in specific implementation. This requires the film industry to further broaden its horizons, strengthen planning, and enhance its awareness of high-quality products, ultimately achieving breakthroughs with films that have a good reputation and high box office.

(The author is a cultural critic)