China pushes cinemas to add karaoke and coffee to ticket sales
▼ Summary
– China’s film regulators issued guidelines urging cinemas to diversify revenue by adding AI concierges, karaoke booths, coffee shops, and merchandise stores instead of relying solely on ticket sales.
– The box office fell 40.6% year-on-year in the first half of 2026 to roughly $2.56 billion, the weakest first half since 2014 excluding pandemic years, driven by a thinner release slate and competition from short videos and AI micro-dramas.
– The “film-plus” policy formalizes a prior strategy to integrate cinema with tourism, dining, tech, and merchandise, citing a multiplier where each yuan at the box office generates 15.77 yuan in related industries.
– The guidelines lack enforcement mechanisms or funding, placing the adoption burden on cinema chains already facing revenue declines, with smaller independent operators most at risk.
– Diversification efforts like karaoke and coffee are seen as a hedge against a weak film slate, but do not address the core problem of fewer blockbuster releases and narrowed windows for Hollywood films.
China’s government is telling cinemas to stop betting everything on ticket sales. New joint guidelines from the National Film Administration and the State Administration for Market Regulation urge theaters to diversify their revenue streams by adding AI concierge agents, karaoke booths, and coffee shops to their lobbies, as reported by Bloomberg.
The same directive encourages operators to open movie-themed merchandise stores, sell licensed products, host art exhibitions, and set up pop-up shops. The goal is to turn idle screening rooms and underused lobby space into retail and cultural hubs.
The timing of this push is telling. According to Screen Daily, China’s box office plunged 40.6% year-on-year in the first half of 2026, landing at roughly $2.56 billion. That marks the weakest first-half performance since 2014, excluding pandemic-era disruptions.
This is a sharp turnaround from 2025, when the country’s 93,187 cinemas , the most of any market globally, per the Hollywood Reporter , generated around $7.45 billion, a nearly 22% increase from the prior year. Audiences showed up in 2025. In 2026, they largely have not, for reasons ranging from a thinner release slate to competition from short videos and AI-generated micro-dramas.
The new guidance isn’t entirely novel; it formalizes an existing concept. Luo Yang, deputy head of the China Film Administration, previously outlined a “film-plus” strategy to integrate cinema with tourism, dining, technology, gaming, and merchandise, as detailed in a Xinhua report carried by China’s State Council Information Office.
That report quantified the ambition: each yuan spent at the Chinese box office is estimated to generate 15.77 yuan of output in related industries, one of the highest multipliers globally. The kind of success seen with Nezha-branded coffee drinks selling five million cups in three days is exactly what regulators now want built into every cinema’s business plan, not just those lucky enough to have a blockbuster attached.
Beijing has also tried subsidies over suggestions. A “Film Consumption Year” initiative, reported at roughly $130 million by Screen Daily, offered ticketing deals and discounts to lure people back. The new karaoke-and-coffee guidelines take a different approach.
Rather than paying people to watch films, they ask cinemas to give them other reasons to walk through the door.
Regulatory nudges of this kind often move faster on paper than on the ground. Converting a screening room into retail space or training staff to run a coffee counter costs money many operators simply do not have, especially with attendance down sharply.
The guidelines carry no disclosed enforcement mechanism or funding, placing the burden of adoption on cinema chains already absorbing the revenue hit the policy is meant to address. Smaller, independent cinemas are likely to feel that burden most acutely. A national chain can pilot a merchandise counter in one flagship venue and see what works. A single-screen operator in a smaller city, running thin margins on a lighter release slate, has far less room to gamble on a karaoke booth nobody asked for.
The broader context is a film industry trying to hold two ideas at once. It wants to be seen as a cultural and economic engine, citing an industry output of 817.26 billion yuan in 2025 per the same Xinhua report, while quietly accepting that ticket sales are no longer the whole story.
China’s AI sector has been closing gaps with rivals at pace, and even its AI video generation unit is chasing growth beyond its original niche. Cinema operators appear to be borrowing that same logic. If people are not coming just to watch a screen, give them an agent, a song, and a flat white while they are there.
None of this addresses the more basic problem of what is actually playing. A thinner blockbuster slate, and what industry reporting suggests has become a narrower window for Hollywood releases in China, appear to have done more to empty seats than any lack of coffee ever did. Karaoke booths and AI concierges might keep the lights on between hits, but they read as a hedge against a weak slate, not a replacement for one.
(Source: The Next Web)
