China Holiday Box Office Breaks Records During National Day 2025

As of Tuesday noon, China’s box office for films screened during the 2025 National Day holiday, including presales, has exceeded 1.6 billion yuan (around 225 million U.S. dollars), according to online platform data.

The eight-day holiday, which began on October 1, is traditionally one of the busiest periods for moviegoers and a fiercely competitive time for the nation’s cinema industry.

Leading the 2025 National Day box office is domestic war epic “The Volunteers: Peace at Last”, the finale of director Chen Kaige’s acclaimed “The Volunteers” trilogy. The film portrays the intertwined challenges of battlefield combat and tense diplomatic negotiations during the War to Resist U.S. Aggression and Aid Korea (1950–1953).

Following closely is “Evil Unbound”, a domestic historical drama highlighting the atrocities committed by Japanese Unit 731 in China during World War II. The film focuses on the harrowing experiences of innocent victims subjected to frostbite, poison gas, and vivisection experiments.

The third spot is held by “A Writer’s Odyssey II”, the sequel to the 2021 fantasy-action blockbuster. The movie follows a novelist confronting a dual crisis unfolding in both the real world and the virtual universe of his literary creation.

So far in 2025, over 300 films have been released across China, spanning genres such as history, comedy, animation, and drama, reflecting the diversity and growing scale of the country’s film industry.