For months, it has felt like China’s film industry has lost its magic. Blockbuster after blockbuster has flopped. Box office sales have fallen sharply. Studio executives have muttered darkly about a “negative public opinion environment.”

Now, the industry is turning to an unlikely hero to lift the curse: Harry Potter.

All eight movies in the classic wizarding saga are set to return to the big screen in China over the next few weeks, with theaters hoping a tidal wave of millennial nostalgia can help fill their empty seats.

The early returns have been promising. The first installment of the series, “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” opened at cinemas nationwide on Oct. 11 — and China’s millions of Potterheads turned out in force.

Chinese social media exploded with photos of fans attending screenings in full wizarding robes. Influencers posed for selfies, wands in hands, while appearing to make their ticket stubs levitate. Companies announced plans to hold marathon watch parties featuring back-to-back screenings.

“Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” finished last weekend as China’s second highest-grossing movie, behind only the second installment in the patriotic action franchise “The Volunteers.” It has already taken more than many recent Hollywood releases, including “Bad Boys: Ride or Die” and “Twisters.”

For China’s movie theaters, the extra revenue is badly needed. The film industry has endured a turbulent 2024. A string of domestic and Hollywood blockbusters flopped badly — from the big-budget adaptation of Mai Jia’s hit novel “Decoded” to “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes.”

This summer, box office earnings plunged nearly 50% compared with last year. The early October National Day holiday brought little in the way of relief, as the total box office reached only 2.1 billion yuan ($380 million), down from 2.7 billion yuan in 2023.

With Chinese and foreign releases both failing to attract large audiences, the situation resembles “a perfect storm,” said Chris Fenton, a former Hollywood producer with extensive experience in China.

The crisis left the industry scrambling to find alternative ways to fill theaters. It tried re-releasing domestic hits such as “The Wandering Earth 2,” showing more documentaries, and even arranging live screenings of the Paris Olympics. None of it worked.

But Harry Potter could be different. At a time when the latest Hollywood releases routinely struggle to gain traction in China, the series is a rare example of a Western franchise that has become a genuine cultural touchstone in the country.

J.K. Rowling’s original books are estimated to have sold well over 20 million copies on the mainland, and generations of young Chinese grew up reading them from a young age.

Wang Jia, a 32-year-old from the eastern city of Wuxi, told Sixth Tone that she has been obsessed with Harry Potter since primary school, when she picked up a copy of “The Sorcerer’s Stone.”

“It was a totally different world from my real life,” Wang told Sixth Tone. “As a child, I dreamed of being like Harry Potter — being able to fly and use magic.”

Over the following years, Wang bought each new book “immediately” after it came out. She watched all the films, often several times. She bought a wand, built Lego models of Hedwig the owl, and hung Harry Potter posters on her walls.

When she went to the UK for university, she made pilgrimages to the Warner Bros. studios, King’s Cross station, and other locations featured in the films. Many of her peers share her passion, she said.

“We grew up with Harry Potter,” said Wang. “It’s not just a series of novels or films; the characters in Harry Potter have accompanied us through our lives. We have a connection with these characters.”

Fans like Wang have come to the rescue of China’s film industry before. The Harry Potter movies were previously re-released in China in late 2020, as theaters were trying to recover from the first wave of pandemic lockdowns.

That first set of reruns was a hit. “The Sorcerer’s Stone” alone took over 192 million yuan, according to data from ticketing platform Maoyan, as an outpouring of nostalgia on social media helped drive ticket sales.

Can Harry Potter work its magic once again? Fenton says it’s too early to tell. “Will it work? TBD,” he told Sixth Tone.

The movies have gotten off to a decent start. “The Sorcerer’s Stone” took over 58 million yuan in its first week, while the second movie in the series, “The Chamber of Secrets,” has racked up over 58 million yuan in advance tickets ahead of its release on Friday.

That puts the movies well ahead of most new releases in China at the moment. “Joker: Folie à Deux,” for example, has taken only 17 million yuan since its premiere earlier this week.

Whether this is enough to provide relief to China’s struggling theaters is another question. There is a lot of ground to make up. In the summer alone, box office revenues were down almost 10 billion yuan compared with last year.

For most analysts, the film industry can only truly recover if it rediscovers its ability to generate major new hits. Last summer, for example, eight movies took over 600 million yuan. This year, only three passed that milestone.

The fall-off has been driven by a number of factors, including consumers’ growing focus on saving money. But many commentators have pointed to a basic lack of quality in domestic blockbusters this year, as promising releases like Lu Chuan’s sci-fi action movie “Bureau 749” flopped due to poor word of mouth.

In August, Mao Yu, deputy director of China’s State Film Administration, gave a stark assessment of the state of the industry during a speech at the Changchun Film Festival in northeastern China.

“Chinese cinema needs to change,” Mao said. “First of all, it needs to tell stories well. That’s the only way to convince viewers to keep paying.”

(Header image: A poster for screenings of the full series of Harry Potter films. From Weibo)