A once-struggling movie theater in Guiyang City of southwest China's Guizhou Province has experienced a dramatic turnaround in revenue to top the national box office thanks to the popularity of the animated blockbuster "Ne Zha 2" and its possession of the country's largest IMAX screen.
The Shanghai Film Company (SFC) Cross Cinema has nine screening halls with a total seating capacity of over 1,800. For the past weeks, it has scheduled around 45 screenings per day, with an average daily audience exceeding 5,000. The biggest draw is its IMAX GT hall, which can accommodate 714 viewers at once.
The hall houses China's widest IMAX screen, at 32.16 meters wide and a height of 18.17 meters. Equipped with a cutting-edge 4K dual-laser projection system, the hall aims to offer audiences an ultra-wide viewing angle of over 120 degrees, as wells as sharper and brighter images for an immersive cinematic experience.
The theater has owned the giant IMAX screen since 2018. However, due to its location outside of Guiyang's central business district, business had been slow for years, and management was forced to reduce the number of employees from over 10 to just six.
Even during holiday periods in 2024, its highest single-day occupancy rate just reached 14 percent, with fewer than 1,800 viewers. In the off-season, daily attendance often fell below 200.
The turning point came in 2025 upon the release of "Ne Zha 2" during the Spring Festival holiday, a traditionally strong time for Chinese cinema. The film's popularity, plus the unique viewing experience offered by the giant screen, soon drew massive crowds of viewers.
So far, the theater has recorded a total box office revenue of nearly 4.7 million yuan (about 648,200 U.S. dollars) and welcomed over 70,000 moviegoers. Of the total moviegoers, over 40 percent of came from outside Guizhou.
"'Ne Zha' is really popular, and we've watched it in our hometown. We came specifically to this cinema to experience a movie on an 18-meter-high, 32-meter-wide [screen]," said Wu Xiangtao, a moviegoer from central China's Hunan Province.
"This is actually my second time to watch the film. I watched it in a different theater the first time. And this time, I came here specifically to see how 'Ne Zha 2' would look with such excellent [screening and projection] technology," said Ye Zi, a local moviegoer.
"Ne Zha 2" accounts for over 55 percent of the theater's screenings, with its IMAX GT hall typically showing the film five times a day and tickets sold out for nearly all of them.
"This year, especially after the Lantern Festival (Feb 12), our box office has been beyond anything we could have imagined from the perspective of a business operator. As of today (Feb 23), our box office revenue for the past two months has already surpassed our total revenue for all of last year," said Chen Kaifang, general manager of the SFC Cross Cinema.
Both audiences and industry professionals are not only thrilled by Ne Zha 2's success, but also take pride in the film's cultural impact.
"First of all, China has a deep and rich cultural foundation. And when great films meet the right presentation, they can help more Chinese films reach international audiences and tell good Chinese stories," said Feng Zhipeng, regional manager for the SFC Cross Cinema in Guiyang.
China's blockbuster 'Ne Zha 2' revives struggling cinema in Guizhou
