‘Legend of the White Snake’: the forgotten movie that sold 700 million tickets
Thanks to steadily rising prices, a movie has to sell a lot fewer tickets than it used to in order to be deemed a success. As obvious as that may sound, a trip down memory lane paints a picture of just how big the gulf has grown between how many viewers are willing to shell out on a stub compared to what it used to be.
Streaming has been hugely detrimental in that regard, with the majority of modern titles only spending a matter of weeks playing exclusively on the big screen before being made available for digital download or getting added to an on-demand platform. This has, by extension, chipped away at the necessity of the theatrical experience.
It used to be the case that the cinema was the place to be. Still, when it costs a ridiculous amount of money even for two people to go and shell out on some snacks into the bargain, it’s a lot more cost-effective to simply wait it out for three months tops for any feature that doesn’t involve Christopher Nolan or Tom Cruise, especially when there’s a high chance it’ll premiere on a streamer a household is already subscribing to.
James Cameron’s Avatar might be the highest-grossing film of all time, thanks to the additional 3D surcharge that spiked demand for catching the sci-fi epic in the format for which it was intended. The 331 million tickets it sold is less than not only the director’s own Titanic or Avengers: Endgame but also George Lucas’ original Star Wars, which landed all the way back in 1977.
Its sequel, The Way of Water. is the third top-earning release there’s ever been, and it shifted 80million fewer tickets than its predecessor. Why? Because it demanded to be seen in 3D, if not the full-blown Imax experience, with the 15-year gap causing the cost of going even once to skyrocket.
However, no Hollywood production can hold a candle to Chinese cinema, and that was before it started mounting its own blockbuster productions. The local industry is now the second most lucrative on the planet, but that wasn’t the case throughout the 1970s and 1980s. That being said, the nation’s offerings must have been appointment viewing because even though it’s the top-selling American movie ever made, Titanic is only in 13th position on the historical charts.
The entire dozen ranked above it all hail from China. Nine of them sold over 500million tickets, and one of them even crossed the 700million barrier. A member of the ‘Four Great Folktales’ alongside Lian Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai, Lady Meng Jiang, and The Cowherd and the Weaving Girl, Legend of the White Snake has been brought to the screen several times.
However, the 1980 version directed by Chaowu Fu holds a record for selling more tickets than any other movie, according to China Daily, and it’s one that’s unlikely to be broken. The year before its release, annual admissions reached 29.3 billion, which was the equivalent of every single citizen catching an average of 30 movies a year. Ticket prices ranged between six and 19 cents when converted into US dollars, which helps explain why the population couldn’t get enough of a trip to the multiplex.
If Cameron’s game-changing technological marvels can’t come close to sniffing 400million tickets, then it would be fair to say Legend of the White Snake will never be bettered. The story of the titular spirit transforming itself into a beautiful woman and falling in love with a scholar is one known all over China. It has been told innumerable times across all mediums, but on this occasion, the cinemagoing public couldn’t seem to get enough.
