Opinion leaders like critics may have the final say in the appraisal of a film, but it is the young in provincial cities that increasingly determine the box-office results in the Chinese market.

The boom in China's film market has been quietly shifting from the metropolises to slightly smaller cities - smaller by Chinese standards - with a growing impact on both domestic and imported films and their financial performances.

As late as 2009, Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen accounted for 34.3 percent of the Chinese mainland's box-office revenue. But their share has been slipping year by year, dipping to 25.8 percent last year, says EntGroup, an industry research firm. The market in first-tier cities, which also include Chengdu, Wuhan and Chongqing, has been saturated, and new movie theaters are sprouting up in second- and third-tier cities.