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Hello! Welcome to this edition of CBN Friday Special. I’m Stephanie Li.

The long-awaited Hollywood 3D blockbuster “Avatar: The Way of Water”, the sequel to the 2009 hit “Avatar”, is set to hit the big screen in the Chinese mainland today, the same day it opens in most territories, including the US. 

The sequel returns five years after the original movie to the life of Jake Sully, who is living with his newfound family on the moon Pandora. However, a familiar threat returns to finish what was previously started, so Jake must work with his mate Neytiri and the army of the Na'vi race to protect their home.

With a running time of 3 hours and 10 minutes, ticket prices for the new Avatar are more expensive than most of the movies in the market. The average ticket price for the film is about 85 yuan and  it costs 128 yuan for IMAX viewings. Ticket prices in Shanghai, Shenzhen and Haikou, South China’s Hainan Province are among the top three in China. 

Now with the easing of Covid policies in China after three years in the pandemic, the latest James Cameron production appears to have garnered massive appeal in China. 

Box office soon hit 100 million yuan at around 3:30 p.m. today, according to data on movie ticketing platform Maoyan, becoming the second Hollywood blockbuster this year to reach the 100-million-yuan mark on the first day of release since June.

More than 600,000 netizens have added the movie in their “want to watch” lists after the release date was announced, while pre-sales for the movie crossed the 100 million yuan mark in China just three days after tickets became available, and reaching above 150 million yuan as of Wednesday. 

After the June release of US sci-fi action series film “Jurassic World Dominion”, where it earned more than 1 billion yuan ($139.8 million), no Hollywood movie or other overseas films have performed well in China this year. The “Avatar” sequel is one of the few major tent-pole films to be granted access to the world’s largest movie market since the beginning of the pandemic.

After a decade which saw Hollywood viewing Chinese box office as a path to fortune and glory, the rapidly expanding marketplace has provided a boost to overall grosses for their biggest franchise-friendly blockbusters.

The original "Avatar," released in 2009, heavily relied on foreign markets as it went on secure $2.74 billion globally, becoming the highest grossing movie of all time. More than $200 million of that total stemmed from mainland China. 

The film held the title of the world's highest-earning film for 10 years, until is was replaced by a Marvel series – “Avengers: Endgame” in 2019. However, with recent re-releases of the film, it has taken back the crown and currently sits at $2.922 billion.

The release of the blockbuster is well expected to lift up the Chinese film market given its previous success, like a “timely rain” for cinemas suffering from the drought caused by the pandemic, coupled with the lack of Hollywood-approved films that have heavily weighed on China's theatrical ecosystem. 

When the first “Avatar” was introduced to China 13 years ago, millions of Chinese moviegoers crowded into cinemas to see it even though the size of the film market at the time was limited, while now China has the biggest number of cinema screens in the world – 80,000 screens – including more than 700 IMAX theaters.

The success of the original “Avatar” paved the way for Hollywood, with U.S.-made films accounting for as much as 45% of all ticket sales in China in 2012. Hollywood was raking in big bucks in China — a record $3.3 billion in 2017 — as the country expanded the number of movie theaters and helped subsidize moviegoing as an activity for its burgeoning middle class.

“Avatar: The Way of Water” presents a much-needed opportunity, for China to again show that it can generate the kind of box office horsepower that will grab the attention of studios and again make the country an essential destination for their blockbuster films, observers said.

According to data from industry monitor Lighthouse, the Chinese mainland box office only raked in 28.4 billion yuan (including service fees) in the first 11 months this year, falling short by a distance compared with the 64.2 billion yuan box office in 2019.

Content supply also leaves a huge gap. In terms of the number of domestic films released, the average during the 2020-2022 period was about 340, lower than the pre-pandemic level. The number of imported films released has also plummeted to about 50 a year, less than half of the pre-pandemic level.

But what makes the new “Avatar” all the more unique is also the fact that, its screening in China will bring massive benefit to Disney and 20th Century. 

China's market value previously comprised roughly a quarter of the global box office at $9 billion in 2019 and Hollywood studios typically relied on Chinese theaters to ensure films reached $1 billion. China's box office value has decreased greatly following the pandemic. Recent reports place China's current market value at approximately $5 billion for 2022.