(Yicai Global) May 6 -- China’s record-low box office taking over the recent Labor Day holiday were acceptable considering that Covid-19 outbreaks forced cinemas to shutter at what would normally be a busy time of the year, movie industry insiders said.

Ticket sales sank 82 percent to CNY295 million (USD44.3 million) between April 30 and May 4, according to data from ticketing platforms Cbdio and Maoyan. It was the lowest amount ever, except for the Labor Day holiday in 2020, when all of China’s movie theaters were closed.

“Cinemas in both Shanghai and Beijing, where most tickets are sold, were shut,” said Xu Jia, who works in movie production. “So under the such circumstances, the box office performance was good.”

Besides the closure of theaters in these two key movie markets, only five new films hit screens during this year’s five-day Labor Day holiday period compared with 13 last year, noted Zhang Rongdi, an analyst at Cbdio. The release of eight other new titles was postponed.

“Our cinema didn’t perform too badly, as there were not many films on show during the holiday,” the manager of a movie theater in Chengdu, capital of Sichuan province, told Yicai Global.

Both the number of cinemas open and single-day box office takings are picking up across the country. Some 65 percent of theaters, or 7,887, were operating as of May 4, according to Cbdio data. During the three-day Qingming Festival holiday ended on April 5, only about half were.

Single-day ticket sales have been improving since then. Box office takings on May 1 alone exceeded CNY60 million (USD9 million), the first time sales had climbed to that level since March 6.

“Movie releases will be relatively secure once the operating rate is above at least 70 percent,” Xu noted. “It’d be ideal if cinemas in first-tier cities accounted for 65 percent to 70 percent of that.”

Editor: Zhang Yushuo, Futura Costaglione