A Movie Holiday.docVIP

A Movie Holiday 　　Chinas domestic film market is continuing to smash box office records， breaking new ground during the Spring Festival holiday， which lasted from February 7 to 13. Box office revenues from February 8 to 13 reached 3 billion yuan （$460 million）， the largest amount recorded for that period and a 67-percent year-on-year increase， according to the State Administration of Press， Publication， Radio， Film and Television （SAPPRFT）. The Spring Festival has become a moneymaking period for the film industry with more and more families going to the theater to celebrate the holiday. 　　Three films by Hong Kong directors accounted for about 94 percent of the box office takings： Stephen Chows comic fantasy The Mermaid， Cheang Pou-sois The Monkey King 2 and Wong Jing’s crime comedy The Man From Macau 3. Chinese-American computer-animated comedy Kung Fu Panda 3， which hit theaters on January 29， grossed 200 million yuan （$31 million） over the holiday. The Monkey King 2， based on the classic Chinese novel Journey to the West， also hit screens in North America， Europe， Australia and other parts of Asia over the Spring Festival. 　　Chinas film market as a whole has seen robust growth in recent years， with its 2015 box office revenue totaling 44 billion yuan （$6.8 billion）， according to SAPPRFT statistics. Domestic films accounted for about 62 percent of the revenue. Among the 81 films that took in more than 100 million yuan （$15.4 million）， 47 were domestically produced. Altogether， 1.26 billion tickets were sold in 2015， a 51-percent year-onyear increase. 　　In comparison， box office revenues in the United States―the worlds largest film market―surpassed $11 billion in 2015， a 5.8-percent increase， according to B， a U.S. website that tracks movie revenue. 　　“The Chinese film market is the strongest driving engine for the world film market and has the largest potential for growth in the world，”said Yin Hong， a film and television studies professor at Tsinghua Univer