BEIJING—China’s box office has never been more Chinese. And that’s a worrying sign for Hollywood.
Eight of the 10 top-grossing films in China so far this year have been domestic movies—putting the Chinese film industry on pace for its best year ever by this metric as Hollywood loses ground in what will soon become the world’s largest movie market.
With two weeks to go, only “Avengers: Endgame” and “Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw” are in the top 10 grossing films of the year in China, according to Maoyan Entertainment, the country’s biggest online movie-ticketing platform by transaction volume. By comparison, six of the top 10 last year were Chinese.
Hollywood’s diminishing share of China’s biggest box-office hits comes even as Chinese moviegoers continue to break new revenue records. Chinese movie receipts for 2019 surpassed last year’s total earlier this month and had reached $8.76 billion as of Tuesday, according to data released Wednesday by Maoyan, which is backed by internet giant Tencent Holdings Ltd.
China’s 1.4 billion consumers were once regarded as fertile ground for Hollywood filmmakers looking to fatten ticket sales for blockbuster films. At its current rate of growth, PricewaterhouseCoopers predicts China could surpass the U.S. as the world’s largest movie market as soon as next year.
China is increasingly producing blockbusters of its own, and finding a ready audience among Chinese moviegoers.
One example is “Ne Zha,” which became the first domestically-produced animated film to top the Chinese box office for the year, having earned roughly 5 billion yuan ($715 million) since its July opening. The movie, which tells the story of a young demon destined to die by lightning on his third birthday, even found some success overseas in markets like Australia, New Zealand, the U.K. and the U.S.—where it earned $4 million.
During the Chinese New Year holiday in February, the busiest time of year for the country’s movie industry, science-fiction blockbuster “The Wandering Earth” earned more than 2 billion yuan in a single week.
New box-office records were also set for the extended National Day holiday in early October, when the government promoted a slate of patriotic films, including one called “My People, My Country,” that lionize the accomplishments of Chinese heroes.
The ascendance of Chinese movies this year is a continuation of a yearslong trend in which, more and more, Hollywood is taking a back seat to China’s own domestic filmmakers.
Since 1994, China has placed a quota on the number of foreign films that can be shown in Chinese theaters—the quota is currently around 34 movies that can be imported on a revenue-sharing basis—and Chinese films are quickly catching up with American fare in terms of quality.
“Chinese movie companies are learning to make popcorn flicks well and are doing a good job at appealing to the local audience,” said Michael Cai, president of Interpret LLC, a research firm based in Culver City, Calif. “They are out-Hollywooding Hollywood.”
Gu Qi, a 28-year-old manager at a Beijing-based animation company, said this year’s foreign films didn’t make a strong impression on him. He watched “Avengers: Endgame” but only out of loyalty to Marvel, he said.
Li Xubo, a movie lover in Beijing, says he’s happy to watch whatever keeps him entertained, Chinese or otherwise. “Everyone dreams of being a hero. It’s just enough to see a good guy beat up a bad guy,” said Mr. Li, a 37-year-old immigration consultant.
While the “Avengers” have managed to capture the imagination of Chinese audiences, the same can’t be said for recent Hollywood nostalgia efforts including a reconstituting of the “Star Wars” universe and Disney’s recent “Lion King” remake, says Michael Norris, research and strategy manager at AgencyChina in Shanghai.
“If Hollywood films do not innovate in the story and jump out of the routine, it will be difficult to guarantee the appeal of Hollywood films in the Chinese film market,” says Liu Zhenfei, a data analyst for Maoyan.
The bad news for Hollywood in China comes as the U.S. film industry faces challenges of its own back home, where more would-be moviegoers are choosing to stay at home and stream content produced by Netflix Inc., Amazon.com Inc. and Walt Disney Co. ’s Hulu.
The situation has pushed U.S. filmmakers to seek out Chinese investors in an attempt to evade China’s quota system and increase their exposure to China’s moviegoers.
That has repercussions for filmgoers back home in the U.S., who are offered more movies backed by American and Chinese capital, and that increasingly play to Chinese tastes—with plot elements, actors and scripts planned out with Chinese viewers, and censors, in mind.
In 2018, the most recent year for which data is available, films with Chinese investors accounted for 20% of U.S. box-office ticket sales, versus 3.8% five years ago, according to Interpret.
—Raffaele Huang, Xiao Xiao and Yin Yijun contributed to this article.
Write to Julie Wernau at Julie.Wernau@wsj.com
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