Are Odyssey and Dragon Restaurant the antidote to movies?
During this summer film season, there is no shortage of highly-rated films.
As of August 14, there are at least 5 new films scoring 8 points or above on Douban. Shen Teng has achieved the highest opening score in his career. Christopher Nolan entered the market with his $250 million work Odyssey and the exclusive IMAX presentation. Domestic animations, well-established IPs and superhero films are all well represented this season.
This is not an isolated case this year. The 2025 summer film season also saw a cluster of high-scoring titles, with 7 new theatrical releases scoring 8 points or above, and the average rating of top-tier films staying at a relatively high level in recent years.
The overall market also sends positive signals. According to official and platform data, both the box office and the number of moviegoers this summer film season have seen a slight year-on-year increase, reaching 9.4 billion RMB and 250 million people respectively (as of mid-August). More people are willing to go to cinemas than last year. However, this recovery has not caught up with the peak in 2023: the total box office of that summer film season exceeded 200 billion RMB, with over 500 million moviegoers.
A score of 8 still represents a good reputation, stars still have drawing power, and IPs and high production specifications still work. The change is that these factors that have repeatedly worked in the past are increasingly difficult to steadily translate into huge box office returns. Even if star power, good reputation and high production standards are combined, it is not guaranteed that a film can expand its audience from core fans to the broader public.
The conversion from a good film to a nationwide hit has become more unpredictable. Can films that are both critically acclaimed and commercially appealing like Odyssey and Welcome to Dragon Restaurant become the antidote the film industry needs? There may not be a clear answer right now.
01. Even the combination of Nolan and Shen Teng is not enough
Before the official release of Odyssey, one of Nolan's fans was convinced that the box office of this film in Chinese mainland would definitely exceed 1 billion RMB.
This optimism is not unfounded. Before the official release, Odyssey had been screened in limited previews across China for two consecutive weekends. The first round of previews was only open to selected IMAX cinemas in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, with an average attendance rate as high as 94%. On the day of the second round of previews on August 8, it only got 0.4% of the total screening slots, but contributed 8.8% of the single-day box office.
Tickets were extremely hard to get in some special IMAX halls.
For the preview sessions at the IMAX GT Hall of China National Film Museum, tickets priced at 183 RMB were often sold out within minutes. On the secondary market, ordinary seats were marked up to 500 RMB, while prime middle seats were even listed at 1500 RMB, nearly 10 times the original price. Luo Yonghao even posted on social platforms, offering 2000 RMB on behalf of a friend to buy four tickets.
This is the most sought-after movie ticket this summer.
Source / Odyssey page on Douban
But after the official release, what was broken first was not the box office record, but the box office expectations of some fans.
As of August 14, the total pre-release preview and pre-sale box office of Odyssey has exceeded 100 million RMB, but its opening day box office was only about 56 million RMB, and the projected final box office is less than 800 million RMB. This shows that the viewing enthusiasm of core fans has not spread to a wider audience. There is also a noticeable gap in attendance rates between IMAX halls and regular screening halls.
The projected box office of over 700 million RMB is not a bad result, but for a film that has almost stacked director appeal, global critical acclaim, top industrial standards and the scarcity of IMAX presentation, this performance is still somewhat regrettable.
Odyssey is not an isolated case.
Welcome to Dragon Restaurant is probably the film closest to a "destined blockbuster" in this summer season. Directed by Wen Muye and starring Shen Teng, it grossed over 100 million RMB in three days of previews, opened at 8.4 points on Douban, and has now risen to 8.5 points. On the fourth day of its wide release, its cumulative box office was close to 500 million RMB, and Maoyan Professional Edition predicts its total box office will be around 2.5 billion RMB.
In this year's summer season, 2.5 billion RMB is enough to compete for the annual championship. But for Shen Teng, the national-level "box office king" whose total starred film box office has exceeded 40 billion RMB, although this new film has earned him the highest critical acclaim in his career, its current box office trend has not shown the explosive power matching its reputation.
For reference, Shen Teng's previous film Hi, Mom opened at around 8.1 points on Douban and grossed 5.413 billion RMB in the end; Full River Red opened at 8.0 points and grossed 4.544 billion RMB; Pegasus 2 opened at 8.2 points and grossed 3.398 billion RMB in total.
Of course, all the above films benefited from the Spring Festival film season. But even if we only make comparisons within the summer film season, the explosive power that Welcome to Dragon Restaurant has shown so far is far less impressive than those real "miracle" hits in the past.
Released in 2015, Monkey King: Hero Is Back staged a counterattack from low screening slots and became a landmark event for the industrialization of domestic animation; released in 2019, Nezha: Birth of the Demon Child grew from an animated film to a nationwide hot topic, eventually grossing over 5 billion RMB.
With a long runtime and a large audience base, the summer film season has always been regarded as one of the seasons where counterattacks most easily happen. As long as a film has strong enough reputation, it usually gets the chance to follow an upward curve: core audiences go to see it first, word of mouth spreads on social networks, more casual viewers are attracted to cinemas, screening slots increase accordingly, and the box office further fuels the popularity.
But now, similar scenarios are increasingly difficult to replicate.
Eight Immortals! opened at 8.3 points on Douban and is one of the best-performing domestic animations this year, with a cumulative box office of about 1.5 billion RMB as of August 12; The Three Kingdoms Part 1: The Battle for Luoyang also scored over 8 points, but it once stayed around 100 million RMB at the box office two weeks after its release, and was eventually pulled from the release schedule; Island of Your Dreams opened at 8.0 points, but it did not immediately convert its good reputation into box office of the same magnitude.
An industry insider previously told Dingjiao One that in the past, a Douban score of 8.0 itself was enough to drive box office, but this "golden threshold" will keep moving higher in the future.
02. "Being entertaining" is only the minimum threshold for going to the cinema
Why is the "golden threshold" moving higher? From the perspective of a senior film producer, the reason is simple — it is getting harder and harder to get audiences to buy a ticket specially and spend two hours going to the cinema.
The current entertainment market provides nearly unlimited content available anytime and anywhere. Short videos can deliver a punchline or plot twist in just a dozen seconds, games, live streams and social platforms keep generating instant stimulation, and AI further reduces the cost of content production. In contrast, going to the cinema has become a relatively "heavy" entertainment activity. Audiences need to consider transportation and show schedules, cannot fast forward or adjust playback speed during the two hours, plus the ticket price and catering cost, the time and money cost of a single movie viewing is significantly higher than scrolling through short videos or watching series at home.
This means that besides "being good", there needs to be another clearer reason to pull audiences away from their phones and into cinemas. Several top films in this summer film season have just demonstrated several different reasons for audiences to show up at cinemas.
Kung Fu Soccer Girls only scored 6.4 points on Douban, but its box office exceeded 2.2 billion RMB and led the ranking for a long time in the first half of the summer season. Its biggest selling point is Stephen Chow. For a large number of ordinary audiences, "Stephen Chow's new film" itself is a simple enough entry point for mass consumption.
Odyssey took another path. The obvious difference in popularity between its IMAX screenings and regular screenings shows that many audiences are not only paying for the story, but also for a viewing experience that cannot be replicated at home. Moreover, for core film fans, Odyssey is more like a ritual "pilgrimage". That's why the IMAX tickets for special halls can be marked up to thousands of RMB.
The path of Welcome to Dragon Restaurant is different again.
Source / Welcome to Dragon Restaurant page on Douban
Shen Teng provides the initial star credibility, and Wen Muye delivers the quality expectation; after the previews, the reputation of over 8.4 points further transforms star-driven appeal into emotional communication. Audiences go to the cinema not just to "watch Shen Teng", but also because social networks keep reinforcing the judgment that this is a film that is both entertaining and likely to bring emotional resonance.
Stars, famous directors, good reputation and scarcity can still make a film a top title in its release season, but it is increasingly difficult for it to go a step further and become a nationwide hit.
It is even harder for 8-point films that do not have these labels. The Three Kingdoms Part 1: The Battle for Luoyang has a good score, but its theme has a natural audience boundary; Island of Your Dreams also has a good reputation, but it lacks the easily recognizable consumption labels for ordinary audiences in the early release period, such as Stephen Chow, Shen Teng or IMAX.
This kind of audience mobilization power is not inexhaustible. Stars and IPs are consumed repeatedly, and special formats and high-standard screening halls can create a sense of scarcity, but they are naturally more concentrated among core film fans and in first-tier cities.
The traditional word-of-mouth counterattack still exists, but the threshold is also rising.
A typical case this year is Love Letter for Grandma. The film opened at 9.0 points on Douban, once rose to 9.3 points, and still contributed nearly 600 million RMB at the box office after entering the summer film season.
Now, for a film that lacks stars, IP and industrial spectacle, if it wants to break through the audience circle purely by word of mouth, what it needs may no longer be just "pretty good", but overwhelming reviews close to 9 points.
03. Neither Nolan nor AI is the ready answer
As it gets harder and harder to find a clear "reason to go to the cinema", two opposite trends are emerging in the film industry.
One trend is to make films more cinematic.
Nolan did not cut production costs, nor did he compromise for streaming viewing habits. On the contrary, he invested 250 million dollars, shot this nearly three-hour ancient Greek epic entirely with IMAX cameras, and used a large number of real locations, real ships and practical effects. There are only about 41 cinemas in the world that can project the 70mm IMAX film version, and the rare projection equipment itself has become part of the film experience.
Up to now, the global box office of Odyssey has exceeded 1.1 billion dollars. In the eyes of many practitioners, this seems like a victory for "cinematic nature" — when audiences are getting more and more used to watching stories on mobile phones and TV sets, cinemas must provide something that cannot be replaced elsewhere.
But the problem is, Nolan cannot be mass produced.
He once mentioned that the nearly 1 billion dollars global box office of Oppenheimer and its subsequent success at the Oscars "gave me more choices". Universal Pictures is willing to invest such a high budget and long production cycle in Odyssey, which is built on the credibility Nolan has accumulated over more than 20 years.
Lead actor Matt Damon also does not think this is a returning regular production method. There are almost no directors now who can complete an epic film on such a large scale without relying on green screens. When filming Odyssey, he even treated it as "his last film".
Moreover, the result of this path may not be that all films become more and more luxurious, but that resources are further concentrated on a small number of top projects.
Source / Odyssey page on Douban
The other path is AI.
In the past two years, AI has begun to be applied in links such as concept design, storyboarding, special effects and video generation. Its most direct significance is to make some previously expensive and time-consuming image production work much cheaper. Even Elon Musk has announced that he will use Grok Imagine to reshoot a new version of Odyssey.
For films that are increasingly difficult to cover their production costs with box office, reducing cost itself is a way to survive. Visual effects that could only be afforded by big productions in the past may be completed by much smaller teams in the future; some projects that could not be launched due to budget constraints may also get opportunities because of this.
But AI only solves the problem of "how to produce content more cheaply", and does not solve the problem of "why audiences should go to the cinema for this specific film". On the contrary, when there is more and more content and production becomes faster and faster, the cost of "watching a story" gets lower and lower, and the attention competition for theatrical films will only become more intense.
During the promotion period of Odyssey in China this year, an interview that did not discuss box office, stars or even IMAX equipment unexpectedly went viral.
Podcast host Zhong Shu asked Nolan: If Homer was a bard in the rising era of civilization, is today's Nolan a "bard singing for a declining civilization"?
The reason why this sentence strikes a chord with many people may be that the film industry is also in a similar transition period.
Directors, stars, word of mouth and screening slots are still important, but they are increasingly difficult to steadily convert into box office;