China box office up 51% Q1 amid ticket fraud

China’s box office revenues grew 51% in the first quarter of 2016, Chinese state radio said on Sunday, although a ticketing scandal has cast doubt on the real size of the country’s booming movie market. Reuters reported that total sales of tickets in China were RMB14.5 bn in the first three months of the year. But a ticketing fraud has called into question the validity of sales data. More than 100 Chinese investors descended on the offices of one financier of martial arts movie Ip man 3 on Thursday, demanding their money back after the film’s distributor admitted to buying RMB56 mn in tickets to bump up sales.