Without a "National Blockbuster" Spring Festival release, can it still meet capital expectations?

On the morning of February 24th, the A-share film sector experienced a collective decline. By the close, multiple stocks such as Enlight Media (SZ300251), Bona Film Group (SZ001330), China Film (SH600977), Wanda Film (SZ002739), Shanghai Film (SH601595), Hengdian Film & TV (SH603103) hit the daily limit down, with Happy Blue Ocean (SZ300528) and Jinyi Film & TV (SZ002905) approaching the limit.

Image source: Web screenshot

Investors generally believe that, just after the Spring Festival holiday, the market’s reaction is closely related to the box office performance during the holiday period.

This year’s Spring Festival box office exceeded 4.35 million screenings, setting a new record for the same period. The daily screenings from the first to the seventh day exceeded 550,000, a 15% increase compared to the same period in 2025. However, the first-day box office was 1.278 billion yuan, down about 30% year-on-year, returning to 2018 levels. Additionally, the average ticket price on the first day was 49.7 yuan, lower than 51.3 yuan in the same period last year.

The 2026 Spring Festival box office significantly declined. On the other hand, CCTV’s Spring Festival Gala showcased a new format of program interaction with viewers, and large-scale content projects continued to iterate in production processes, visual presentation, and user engagement.

As old models face challenges and content production and dissemination methods evolve, will this year’s media market recover or face even greater challenges?

Image source: Douban Spring Festival Box Office Wrap-up: Increased Volume, Falling Prices, Insufficient Heat

Looking at the film lineup, this year’s Spring Festival featured 8 films, more than last year, but lacking truly “blockbuster” hits. The top three films were “Flying Past Life 3,” “Zhe Wu Silent,” and “The Dagger: Winds Rise in the Desert.” Among them, “Flying Past Life 3” led with over 2.9 billion yuan in box office, becoming the only major work with absolute appeal; “The Dagger: Winds Rise in the Desert” achieved a box office rebound thanks to good word-of-mouth, becoming the biggest dark horse of the festival. Notably, both “Flying Past Life 3” and “The Dagger” shifted audience demographics toward older males, demonstrating how IP (well-known cultural and creative works) and themes reshape audience profiles.

On the production side, Enlight Media participated in three new films—“Flying Past Life 3,” “Zhe Wu Silent,” and “Panda Project: Tribal Adventure”—as well as the re-release film “Return to the Wolf Pack.” China Film was involved in five films—“Flying Past Life 3,” “Zhe Wu Silent,” “The Dagger: Winds Rise in the Desert,” “Bears and Babies,” and “Star River Dreams.” Wanda Film, Bona Film Group, Hengdian Film & TV, Shanghai Film, and Jinyi Film & TV also participated in various projects.

However, unlike the collective breakout of sequels like “Nezha 2,” “Detective Chinatown 1900,” and “Fengshen 2” during the 2025 Spring Festival, the 2026 festival relied only on mature IPs like “Flying Past Life” and “Bears and Babies,” lacking fresh blockbusters, resulting in overall insufficient enthusiasm. Although the films’ reputations remained stable, the absence of national-level works failed to ignite a nationwide viewing frenzy.

Zhejiang Securities research report suggests that this year’s Spring Festival box office deviated significantly from expectations, mainly due to the lack of phenomenon-level blockbusters, delayed word-of-mouth spread, and fragmented entertainment forms (such as short dramas) diverting audiences.

Faced with the complex situation of “volume increase, price drop, and insufficient heat,” Maoyan Entertainment market analyst Lai Li stated that the overall performance of the 2026 Spring Festival was mixed. On one hand, the continued strength of top IPs and the reversal of reputation for quality works, along with the further release of consumption potential in lower-tier markets, demonstrate the solid foundation and resilience of China’s film industry. On the other hand, the “ice and fire” final pattern and box office performance during the festival serve as warnings, prompting the industry to reassess the ecosystem of the Spring Festival, film resilience, “late scheduling” phenomena, and over-reliance on traffic. He recommends that the future of the film industry should further optimize content supply, explore diverse genres, and continuously tap into consumer potential.

Image source: AIGC When the Spring Festival Box Office Can’t “Explode” Anymore, What Can Film Companies Do to Stabilize Market Confidence?

If the Spring Festival box office is a short-term emotional variable, then the high-frequency exposure of AI (artificial intelligence) during the 2026 Spring Festival holiday provides another valuation clue for the media sector.

The 2026 CCTV Spring Festival Gala is widely regarded as the “most AI-intensive” edition. ByteDance’s Doubao AI deeply participated in program creation and interaction: its video generation model Seedance 2.0 helped produce visual spectacles like dynamic doubles and ink wash horses for shows such as “Celebrating the Flower God” and “Wind Riding Song.” On New Year’s Eve, Doubao AI achieved 1.9 billion interactions, generated over 50 million New Year’s greetings, and created more than 100 million New Year avatars, with a TPM (minimum text processing units per minute) reaching 63.3 billion. Volcano Engine, as the AI cloud partner of CCTV’s Spring Festival Gala, provided computing power and algorithms supporting script generation, live narration, and post-production.

In the film industry, ByteDance helped Jia Zhangke complete a New Year short film. Jia Zhangke publicly stated that since the birth of cinema, it has always coexisted with new technologies, and the key is how people use technology.

This wave of AI enthusiasm has changed content production methods and brought new valuation logic to media stocks. Zhu Zhu, chief analyst of media and new consumption at Huaxin Securities, told the Daily Economic News: “The 2026 Spring Festival Gala marks AI’s transition from ‘traffic distribution’ to ‘computing power distribution and content generation,’ and the media sector is expected to benefit from the AI-generated content (AIGC) dividend.”

It is also worth noting that cinemas are actively expanding non-ticket revenue streams to cope with box office fluctuations. During the holiday, Wanda Cinemas’ online and offline activities attracted over ten million participants, with derivative product sales reaching 1.7 million units, including 300,000 plush toys and pendants of “Bears and Babies,” with a purchase rate of 38% among viewers.

Looking ahead, Zhu Zhu identified three trends from the Spring Festival: first, content creation and capital resources continue to focus on mature IPs and sequels, relying on the certainty of established content to navigate market uncertainties, becoming the main development strategy; second, new technologies represented by AI and virtual production are accelerating from concept display to industrial application, helping the film industry reduce costs and improve efficiency; third, the “film + interest social + IP consumption” model is forming, speeding up the shift away from dependence on box office revenue and toward diversified social entertainment scenarios.