Up until the 1980s, the Chinese box office was typically reported in terms of
box office admissions (ticket sales), rather than
gross revenue. The film with the highest ticket sales in China is
Legend of the White Snake (1980) with an estimated admissions, and went on to sell tickets, the highest for a Hollywood film in China up until 2018. was released in 1992 and became China's highest-grossing film with . In 1995, the
Hong Kong action film Rumble in the Bronx, directed by
Stanley Tong and starring
Jackie Chan, became the all-time highest-grossing foreign film in China, it is not considered a domestic film as it was produced in
Hong Kong (then a
British Dependent Territory). It was above the year's highest domestic Chinese film,
Jiang Wen's
In the Heat of the Sun with ¥50 million. In 1998,
Titanic (directed by
James Cameron) became the all-time highest-grossing film to be released in China, with a then-unprecedented ¥360 million. In 2002,
Hero became the second highest-grossing domestic film, with . China's first domestic film to breach ¥360 million was released in 2009,
The Founding of a Republic. In 2015,
Monster Hunt became the first domestic film in 17 years to become the overall highest-grossing film in China, earning ¥2.44 billion.
High-grossing films by year Since the 1990s, the most represented filmmaker in the chart has been American film director
Michael Bay with four films to his credit, occupying the top spot in 2001, 2007, 2011, and 2014. Among domestic filmmakers,
Feng Xiaogang (1999, 2003, 2008),
Zhang Yimou (2002, 2006, 2023),
Stephen Chow (2004, 2013, 2016),
Chen Kaige (2005, 2021, 2022) and
Dante Lam (2018, 2021, 2022) are the most represented with three films each.
Films that are currently in cinema (as of February 2025) Box office milestones == Highest-grossing openings ==