[Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

Chinese movies created two box-office records on the weekend, as Monkey King: Hero is Back made 617 million yuan ($99.3 million) nationwide by Saturday and Monster Hunt 1.32 billion yuan by Sunday, just days after their release.

China's box-office revenue is expected to exceed 30 billion yuan this year, compared with less than 1 billion yuan in 2003. Full cinemas at midnight and long queues in front of the snack stalls suggest one reason why these summer films have been so successful.

The huge audience in China is fertile soil for the growth of the Chinese film industry. With different types of films catering to different tastes, people are willing to open their purses to go and watch a movie. The growing box-office sales in turn have attracted more investment and thus bigger-budget movies with higher production values. Such a healthy cycle has caused the Chinese film market to become the world's second-largest, behind that of the United States.

It is now time for the Chinese movie industry to reach new heights. The popularity of the animated movie Monkey King: Hero is Back and the praise it has received for its drawing and characters has ignited a ray of hope that there is the possibility that domestic films may be able to compete with their Hollywood counterparts.

Due to the introduction of an increasing number of foreign blockbusters in recent years, Chinese audiences have become increasingly critical of domestic films and always show their discontent of the poorly made films by showing their preference for marquee Hollywood movies. That demands domestic film producers continuously improve their filmmaking to continue the momentum that has been achieved this summer.

The above is an abridgement of a People's Daily article published on Monday.