Cinema tickets become city commerce passes: China’s film-plus playbook

A movie ticket used to prove one thing: you had watched a film. In parts of China over the summer, it also unlocked a restaurant discount, a hotel offer, a heritage-site visit, a cultural-market activity or a reason to travel across town. China is treating the ticket stub as local-commerce infrastructure: a trigger that can move people from a film into restaurants, attractions, retail, transport, merchandise and shared public spaces. In February, the National Film Administration and Ministry of Commerce designated 16 cities and districts for a three-year “film-plus” consumption pilot. The program was designed to grow moviegoing, upgrade cinema consumption, expand film-related spending and develop new models for linking film creativity with other parts of the local economy. The important idea is not that films can sell popcorn, tourism or tote bags. It is that a cultural moment can become a coordinated customer journey across an entire city. The ticket stub is becoming a key, not a receipt In Guangdong, the Teochew-dialect drama “Dear You” brought footfall to Zhongshan and Shantou. Zhongshan launched a culture and tourism ticket stub alliance that lets anyone holding a “Dear You” stub claim discounts at participating restaurants. Shantou's culture and tourism authority took a different route, running a call-out on social platforms for recommendations and reviews of Chaoshan dishes and intangible cultural heritage. Commenters came back with beef hotpot and the drumbeat of the Yingge dance. In Sichuan, the animated film “All Wishes Come True” — released on July 18 by Oriental DreamWorks — drew visitors to Qingcheng Mountain, where a roughly 1,900-year-old ginkgo standing in front of Tianshi Cave served as the real-world model for an ancient tree in the film. The scenic area followed with a themed trail linking its own heritage to the story. A ticket provides proof of attention: a consumer has taken part in a particular cultural event, at a particular time and usually in a particular geography. That creates a natural invitation to stay longer, eat nearby, visit a location, buy a themed product or explore a local tradition. For the consumer, it can feel less like being sold to and more like the experience continuing. The best film-plus programmes do not turn a movie into a coupon booklet. They make the city around the movie feel temporarily richer. That distinction matters. A person who sees a scene and wants to stand in that landscape is not responding to a conventional tourism advertisement. They are trying to close the distance between a fictional world and their own life. Good cultural commerce begins with that emotional impulse, then gives it somewhere credible to go. China is building a local operating system around attention The film-plus pilot is part of a wider attempt to extend the value of cinema beyond the box office. The Ministry of Commerce’s announcement names several goals: cultivate additional film demand, improve cinema consumption, expand derivative spending, build film-plus brands and explore ways to measure the results. The commercial insight is practical. A hit film creates concentrated but perishable attention. A city that connects it to bookings, merchants, attractions, social media, merchandise and venues gets a temporary demand network, not merely a box-office spike. China’s digital consumer ecosystem makes that easier. Tickets, transport, payments, maps, reviews, delivery, group buying and social sharing already live in connected mobile habits. The 16 selected locations range from Beijing’s Chaoyang district and Shanghai’s Hongkou district to Shenzhen, Chengdu, Fuzhou, Qingdao and smaller places such as Kunshan and Nanxun. That is revealing. The model is not reserved for global-metropolis prestige. It can be used by a district with cultural assets, a city with a strong food identity, a historic site seeking younger visitors or a cinema looking for a reason to survive beyond blockbuster weekends. Film IP becomes more valuable when it leaves the screen The strongest film-plus programs start long before the premiere. They treat a film as intellectual property with multiple entry points: locations, characters, visual motifs, craft, local history, food, music, cosplay, gaming, exhibitions and collectible objects. “People’s Daily” reported that the 2025 animated hit “Nobody” generated more than 800 merchandise products and more than 2.5 billion RMB ($372.5 million) in related terminal spending, according to industry data. The number should not be read as a universal formula for film success. It illustrates a larger point: when an audience wants to keep a story with them, the commercial opportunity is not limited to a branded T-shirt. A useful Chinese approach is to connect IP to local texture: a setting to a restaurant dish, a historic plot to an immersive exhibit, a character to a regional craft product, or a cinema lobby to a themed market. The aim is to give consumers multiple ways to participate. This has implications for luxury and lifestyle brands. Too many cultural collaborations stop at an event, a limited product or an Instagrammable backdrop. The film-plus model asks a better question: what ecosystem can this story activate? A thoughtful cultural partnership might connect a brand to a city walk, a hotel, a craft workshop, a food experience, a local designer or a member community. The experience becomes harder to replicate precisely because it is rooted in place. The cinema itself is looking for a second business model The ticket is only half the story. The venue is changing too. Cinema operators face a familiar problem: audiences have more entertainment at home, viewing schedules are volatile, and a building designed to earn almost entirely from tickets can feel underused for much of the week. China’s response is to widen the purpose of the spaces. One Shanghai Wanda Cinema used high-specification screens and sound to host late-night World Cup broadcasts. Its manager told “People’s Daily” that non-ticket revenue had risen by more than 40% compared with 2024. The same report described cinemas adding licensed merchandise, interactive photo spaces and technology upgrades. New guidance from the National Film Administration and market-regulation authorities encourages cinemas to introduce cultural markets and improve screening technology. This is not merely a concession-stand strategy. A cinema can be a social venue, an event site, a fan community hub, a retail space, a gaming room, a live-sports destination or a starting point for a neighbourhood programme. In the best version, it becomes a flexible cultural anchor with a film screen at its centre. Streaming may force cinemas to become more communal: less like rooms for silent viewing, more like spaces where cultural participation begins. The risk: turning culture into a coupon campaign There is a reason to remain cautious. Ticket-linked discounts can be easy to launch and difficult to sustain. A restaurant does not gain much from a cinema promotion if the offer only attracts bargain hunters who never return. A tourist location can become overwhelmed by a momentary viral surge without building a deeper connection to visitors. And not every film has the cultural density needed to support a city-wide ecosystem. The model works when three things align. First, the film needs genuine emotional pull. Second, local partners need an authentic connection to the story, the setting or the audience. Third, the organising platform needs to measure more than redemptions. It should ask whether visitors stayed longer, spent across categories, returned, shared the experience and developed a durable relationship with the place. The pilot’s inclusion of consumption monitoring is therefore more than a bureaucratic detail. It points to the hard part of cultural commerce: proving whether attention became value, and whether that value was distributed sensibly among theatres, producers, local merchants and the city. The global lesson is that cultural IP becomes more potent when it is designed as a route through physical life rather than a message delivered at consumers. Lessons for leaders managing cultural partnerships Design cultural partnerships as journeys. The product, event or film should lead consumers somewhere meaningful after the first interaction. Build local specificity into the model. The strongest extensions use a city’s food, craft, history and neighbourhoods rather than generic branded giveaways. Give venues more than one reason to exist. Cinemas, stores and galleries can become social and commercial hubs when their programme is broader than their original product. Measure the ecosystem, not only the transaction. Track cross-category spend, repeat visits, local merchant participation and audience advocacy, not only ticket sales or coupon redemption. Protect the story. Commercial extensions work only when the underlying content has earned the audience’s affection; no discount can manufacture cultural meaning. The bottom line China’s film-plus experiment recognises that attention does not have to evaporate when the credits roll. A cinema ticket can connect a story to a city, a visitor to a neighborhood and a piece of intellectual property to a wider local economy. The most interesting part is not the discount. It is the shift in mindset: culture is being treated as a system that can organise real-world experiences, and real-world commerce, far beyond the screen. Ashley Dudarenok is a Chinese entrepreneur, author, and media personality, recognized by Thinkers50 as a “guru on fast‑evolving trends in China.” She is the founder of ChoZan, a China‑focused research and digital transformation consultancy.

Cinema tickets become city commerce passes: China’s film-plus playbook

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Cinema tickets become city commerce passes: China’s film-plus playbook

How Bottega Veneta weaved China’s forever it bag