(Yicai Global) Sept. 14 -- China’s box office sales over the recent Mid-Autumn Festival slumped 25 percent from the same period last year, the lowest since 2016 discounting two years when the long weekend overlapped with the National Day holiday, due to the limited appeal of new releases and the impact of ongoing outbreaks of Covid-19.

Twelve new movies were released over the festival held from Sept. 10 to 12, five more than last year, but box office takings only amounted to CNY373 million (USD53.5 million) with 9.4 million viewers, according to Lighthouse Data Pro.

This is the lowest figure since 2016, when CNY493 million (USD70.7 million) worth of tickets were sold in 2018. The figures do not take into account takings during 2017 and 2020 when the Mid-Autumn Festival was joined onto the seven-day National Day holiday and ticket sales were not calculated separately.

As the Mid-Autumn Festival long weekend occurs after the school summer holidays and just before the week-long National Day holiday, it is not a prime period for releasing popular films, Sun Jiashan, an associate researcher at the China National Academy of Arts, told Yicai Global

The top three films this year were "Give Me Five", "New Gods: Yang Jian" and "Moon Man." They are all family-friendly films, as the Mid-Autumn Festival is a traditional time for family reunion, Lighthouse analyst Chen Jin told Yicai Global.

However, of the three, only "Give Me Five" was released during the break, while the other two were launched over the summer. “Give Me Five” generated CNY144 million (USD20.6 million) over the long weekend, indicating that although many new films were released during the holiday, their appeal to audiences was indeed limited.

The Chinese movie market was hard hit by Covid-19 flare-ups in the first half, but bounced back significantly in the summer. Movie ticket sales in August surged 80.8 percent from the same period last year to CNY3.7 billion (USD530 million), a gain of 5.7 percent from July, according to data released by the China Movie Database. The number of viewers soared 67.4 percent to 91.7 million.

Editors: Tang Shihua, Kim Taylor