Look at the data first.

The year 2022 cannot be directly used as proof that the movie market has collapsed because that year had a pandemic and cinema operational restrictions, making it an outlier. What is genuinely concerning is this line from 2024 to 2026.

In 2023 and 2024, for two consecutive years, it remained around 1.5 billion, with the number of viewers also exceeding 37 million. By 2025, the box office directly dropped to 747 million, and the number of viewers only reached 18.895 million. As of the evening of May 4, 2026, it had already exceeded 660 million, and it will continue to increase on the last day, but even with a final boost, it is difficult to return to the level of 2023 and 2024.

This is not normal volatility; it is a clear discontinuity/break.

What’s more embarrassing is that the average ticket price for the May Day period in 2026 dropped to around ¥36.9, which is the lowest during this time over the past four years. The tickets are no longer that expensive, but cinema attendance has not significantly recovered. This suggests that the problem is not merely “movie tickets are too expensive,” but rather that many people have completely lost the impulse/urge to “go see a movie at the cinema.”

It’s not like there were never any bad movies before. / There were actually bad movies before.

In past years, audiences haven’t been unable to pay for mediocre films. It was just that at the time, movie-going as a holiday activity carried a certain inertia. During Spring Festival, National Day, and May Day, people saw it in their social circles, short video platforms promoted it, theaters were fully booked, and marketing buzz was everywhere. Many people bought tickets not because they were truly moved by the film, but because “it seemed like everyone else was watching it.”

This kind of business is very effective in the short term.

Trending stars can drive the first wave of pre-sales, emotional marketing can turn controversy into buzz, and platform algorithms can push clips to every single person. As long as it takes off during the opening weekend, the box office numbers will become new promotional materials. Even if the film itself is mediocre, it can still maintain the appearance of being a massive hit.

But this approach has a side effect: it depletes the audience’s trust in movie theaters.

I still have no interest in catching up on films like Full River Red or Spicy Rolling Hot. It’s not that they failed commercially; of course, they succeeded. The problem is that when the public discussion surrounding a film increasingly resembles a marketing campaign, it becomes difficult for audiences to believe that what they are seeing is the work itself. Online, people often say that the promotion and marketing costs of certain films exceed the production costs. I cannot find reliable public financial data for this claim, so I cannot state it as a fact. But from an audience perspective, it shows one thing: people have begun to suspect that the money was not spent on making the movie, but rather on making you feel like you must watch it.

Once such suspicion has formed, it is difficult to repair it by relying on the next hot search.

In the past, even after criticizing a bad movie, people might still go see it during the next screening cycle. That is not the case anymore. Short videos, streaming series, games, concerts, travel, camping, city walks—there are too many choices for holidays now. If movies cannot provide a reason that they must be watched in a cinema, they will naturally get crowded out/marginalized.

Economic downturn is only an accelerator, not the sole reason.

During times when money is tight, people won’t stop consuming completely; rather, they will re-prioritize their spending. In the past, spending a couple hundred [currency unit] on a movie ticket plus drinks and popcorn was acceptable. Now, that same amount of money can cover a meal, buy a game, or afford an outing. If movies still rely on hype, traffic, or emotional manipulation to compete for this spending power, the audience will naturally be more hesitant.

What is more problematic is that in the past few years, the film market has led audiences to develop a defensive consumption psychology: the harsher the pre-release hype, the more they tend to wait; the denser the trending topics, the more artificial it seems; and the more exaggerated the opening day box office, the less it indicates if the movie is truly good. Audiences are not ignorant; they simply were too lazy to scrutinize things before.

This phrase is quite contextual, and the best translation depends on whether the speaker means “keeping account/score” in an argument, or simply becoming overly critical of details.

Here are a few options based on different implied contexts:

1. (Most common - Implies arguing or scoring faults):

You’re starting to keep score now. / Now you’re getting picky.

2. (Implies criticizing small details - Nitpicking):

You’ve started nitpicking. / Now you’re fussing over the details.

3. (More general/literal, but less natural in English):

Now it’s starting to be scrutinized.

The collapse of blockbuster seasons like the May Day period isn’t that audiences suddenly betrayed movie theaters; rather, it signifies that the guarantee that cinemas once offered has evaporated. Previously, buying a ticket felt like participating in a holiday ritual; now, it feels more like making a calculated risk. If the film is bad, you lose your money, you waste your time, and you are still forced to endure two hours of awkwardness.

So I don’t think it’s a bad thing.

In the short term, both cinemas and production companies are struggling. In the long term, if audiences rely less on blind following and the market has less artificial hype, things might actually return to normal. Promotion can lure people into the cinema once, but it cannot make them continuously trust the cinema. What can truly bring people back is the content itself.

The problem is whether the industry is willing to acknowledge this.

If they continue to point fingers at economics, ticket prices, weather, and short videos, and keep filling up the screening slots with popular stars and marketing platitudes, then the May Day period is only the beginning. The audience won’t formally announce their departure from movie theaters; they will just stop buying tickets time after time.

This is more frightening than curses/swearing.

References

Writing Notes

Original Prompt

$blog-writer Everyone is saying that this year’s May Day film box office has collapsed. Comparing it to previous years’ data, it is indeed dismal. Putting aside the economic downturn and the fact that people aren’t as wealthy in their pockets anymore, are previously released flop films not at fault? The spending driven by capital + hype will eventually backfire. This is the best backlash—are people simply not going to movie theaters? Man Jiang Hong and Hot & Spicy, I still can’t bear watching these two movies; their promotional costs might even exceed their production costs. Remember to organize a specific table comparing how the May Day box office has collapsed over these five years.

Summary of Writing Ideas

• Create a table using May Day period data from 2021 to 2026, but clearly state that 2026 is not yet the final closing number.
• Mark 2022 separately as an anomaly due to the epidemic, and focus the main text on the gap/discontinuity between 2024 and 2026.
• The core argument is that the audience’s trust in high marketing expenditures, guaranteed screening slots, and low-quality content has begun to face a backlash.
• Do not treat “marketing expenditure exceeding production costs”