The recently concluded Chinese Spring Festival holiday saw a strong return for local movies, following a significant decline in the box office in 2022. In total 126 million tickets were sold, adding up to CNY 6.65 billion (USD $982 million) as of last Friday.

Four local titles dominated the new releases, though for the first time a Hollywood title (“Avatar: The Way of Water”) was permitted to continue screening even during China’s biggest holiday.

This year’s Spring Festival, also known as the Chinese Lunar New Year, was the second highest on record and higher than last year’s. Six new titles were released and, as well being a financial success, four of them received a score of 7.0 or higher on the review aggregation platform Douban.

Highest grossing was Zhang Yimou’s historical suspense comedy “Full River Red,” which took CNY 2.55 billion (USD $380 million) and accounted for 38% of the total box office. In second place was science fiction prequel “The Wandering Earth 2” with CNY 2.13 billion (USD $310 million), having won the top spot on the first day of release. Animated family sequel “Boogie Bears: Guardian Code” taking CNY 743 million (USD $109 million).