With China still offering potentially huge local blockbusters while Hollywood mostly holds out for next year, that gap will only widen.

But China isn’t the only country whereby local biggies are doing big business. Demon Slayer, a feature-film continuation of a popular anime, scored $44 million in Japan this weekend, including $2.27 million in 38 IMAX auditoriums alone.

We can only speculate as to whether China’s domination is a fluke of the pandemic (China’s theaters closed in late January but reopened sooner and stronger than in America) or the new normal. Needless to say, we won’t know the long-term picture until America’s theaters return to normal, which in turn is seemingly dependent on a better nationwide handling of the coronavirus.  

But China’s current dominance and Japan’s current success with Demon Slayer again indicates that, in countries where it’s safe to do so and where audiences are getting tentpoles that justify a trip to the multiplex, theatrical moviegoing is coming back to life in a way perhaps comparable to the pre-pandemic status quo. 

Theaters outside NYC will open in New York beginning next weekend. Once again, that Hollywood is standing over a cliff due to domestic box office challenges (Tenet is doing pretty okay overseas with $283 million thus far) disproves the decade-old lie about the alleged irrelevance of North American box office. Hollywood may have convinced itself that it needed China, but China sure doesn’t need Hollywood anymore.