今年的春節檔電影院可謂是熱鬧非凡。據國家電影局發布的統計數據，2023年春節檔（除夕至正月初六，1月21日至1月27日）位列中國影史春節檔票房榜第二位。電影票房達到67.58億元，同比增長11.89%；觀影人次為1.29億，同比增長13.16%；國產影片票房占比為99.22%。
China's box office during the Spring Festival holidays (Jan 21-27) exceeded 6.75 billion yuan, surpassing 2022's 6.04 billion yuan mark, making this year's Spring Festival holiday the second highest-grossing to date, according to China Film Administration.
A hi-tech craze has been sweeping China during the Spring Festival holiday with China's homemade sci-fi epic The Wandering Earth II hitting theaters, scoring 2.6 billion yuan at the box office so far, and it has sparked heated discussion over the country's hard technology as well as the public's keen interest in the peripheral derivative product of the movie.
For example, the crowdfunding for several peripheral derivative product of the movie have received more than 100 million yuan as of press time, overshooting its targeted amount of 100,000 yuan within nearly a week after the movie's release.
As a prequel of the first movie, the new tale takes place in an earlier period, recounting how the world is facing an unprecedented crisis and plans to migrate the Earth out of the solar system by installing more than 10,000 enormous fusion-powered engines on the Earth. It explains why humanity has decided to move the Earth out of the solar system for a new home in the galaxy.
It also delves into some intriguing, hard-core, sci-fi concepts such as digital immortality, the movie has been widely hailed as a visual feast that features many special-effect scenes, indicating improvements in the Chinese film industry.
'The creators of The Wandering Earth II are very similar to the characters featured in the movie. Their great courage and innovative spirit are the engine to push the 'planet' of science fiction into the future,' Liu Cixin, author of the popular story The Wandering Earth and the Hugo Award-winning sci-fi novel The Three-Body Problem, said Sunday in a post on China's Twitter-like Sina Weibo after watching the hit sci-fi epic The Wandering Earth II for the second time.
'We all know that China's science fiction has a long way to go. Fortunately, such a group of people are working tirelessly,' he said.
