by Xinhua writer Zhang Yunlong
BEIJING, Sept. 1 (Xinhua) -- China's 2026 summer movie season closed Monday with total box office revenue at nearly 12.5 billion yuan (1.84 billion U.S. dollars), up slightly from about 12 billion yuan a year earlier, marking a second consecutive year of growth for the June-August window, according to data from the China Film Administration.
Admissions rose to about 340 million, up from 321 million in 2025 and 284 million in 2024.
While these figures still fall well short of the 2023 summer season's record of 20.6 billion yuan in revenue and 504 million admissions, according to data from ticketing platform Maoyan, industry observers view the quality and diversity of this year's film slate as a bright spot after several sluggish seasons.
Lai Li, an analyst at Maoyan, said the season got off to a slow start but gained momentum as more films were released in its second half, with box office and admissions climbing steadily to post year-on-year growth in both metrics -- a sign of the market's resilience. Chen Jin, an analyst at data platform Beacon, said the summer box office results had boosted confidence for the film market's performance in the coming months, including the National Day and New Year holiday periods.
"Kung Fu Soccer," directed by Stephen Chow and released July 11, topped the season with 2.3 billion yuan. Three other films, namely restaurant-set war drama "Once Upon a Time in the Middle East" (1.9 billion yuan), animated fantasy "All Wishes Come True" (1.8 billion yuan) and Hollywood's "Spider-Man: Brand New Day" (1.5 billion yuan), each cleared 1 billion yuan.
Christopher Nolan's "The Odyssey" took in roughly 600 million yuan. Further down the chart, crime drama "V," war film "Crossing" and action thriller "The Furious" brought in 400 million, 290 million and 200 million yuan, respectively.
Animation studio Light Chaser's "Three Kingdoms: The Beginning," the first installment of a planned trilogy retelling the classical epic, earned just 90 million yuan but drew critical acclaim, suggesting a possible slow-burn following for the franchise.
In an interview with Xinhua, Rao Shuguang, president of the China Film Critics Association, said the season followed a "low-then-high" trajectory, with box office performance improving as it progressed. He singled out "Once Upon a Time in the Middle East" as the season's standout, calling it a major achievement for Chinese cinema and saying its expansion of genre and style, particularly in its more international approach to storytelling, offered new experience for how Chinese films can gain a stronger voice abroad.
Noting that this season's titles served a wider range of audience tastes, Rao said Chinese cinema is still undergoing "difficult structural adjustment" while adapting to the disruptive effects of new technologies such as AI, and needs to keep strengthening audience engagement to expand its market.
Directed and co-written by Wen Muye, "Once Upon a Time in the Middle East" follows a Chinese cook, Xu Fu, who travels to the Middle East to work in a Chinese restaurant and finds himself building a gathering place for people of different backgrounds as war breaks out around them. Rather than centering the story on soldiers or political leaders, the film follows cooks, restaurant workers and children whose lives are upended by conflict.
Wen has said this choice grew out of a simple contrast: war is cruel, while food represents happiness. Some Chinese commentators have framed the film as a marker of Chinese cinema's growing ability to compete for international narrative influence.
Mohamed Mazen, an Egyptian journalist who has lived in China for 17 years, said the film offered a distinctive perspective on war. Having grown up on Hollywood films centered on soldiers and larger-than-life heroes, he found its focus on ordinary people struggling to preserve a sense of normality amid violence to be a striking departure.
"All Wishes Come True," an animated fantasy-comedy, drew strong word-of-mouth acclaim by reimagining the eight Taoist immortals of Chinese folklore as flawed, striving individuals before their ascension, rather than as already-divine figures.
Unlike most tellings of the legend, director Mou Zhengyang said in an article published in People's Daily that he set out to show the immortals as ordinary people first -- figures with their own trades and flaws, prone to petty scheming and undermining one another, who become immortal only after learning to back each other up when it counts.
"Going it alone is fast. Going together goes further," Mou wrote of the group's arc. The approach has resonated with audiences. Mou cited one viewer's review that read, simply: "I walked out of the theater and decided to become a kinder person."
Chen Xuguang, director of Peking University's Institute of Film, Television and Theatre, said the film tapped into a familiar formula -- updating classical mythology in ways that invite contemporary parallels -- a strategy that worked for animated hits such as "Ne Zha 2" and "Nobody" last year.
He told Xinhua that the film's blend of folklore with a game-like narrative structure and visual style had also helped it connect with younger, more digitally native audiences. ■
