This paper analyses the impact of film social spillover effects on tourism development by considering films released publicly in cinemas between 2000 and 2018 with a box office intake exceeding100,000 RMB. The conclusions obtained are as follows: firstly, as social networks, films can boost revenues from localisation tourism. The tourism income of the city that appears in the movie increased by8.98%; a 10% increase in box office, the tourism revenue will increase by 0.41%. In addition, a 10% increase in domestic box office, domestic tourism revenue increases by 0.28%; a 10% increase in overseas box office, inbound tourism revenue will increase by 0.13%. Secondly, films drive tourism growth by extensive margin, rather than the intensive margin. Thirdly, estimation results by generalized propensity matching score show that, the influence of signal intensity on tourism conforms to the law of diminishing marginal returns, the results did not change after taking into account the effects of industry protection policy. Fourthly, there is no evidence to suggest that films can promote online tourism. In addition, the endogeneity test of the instrumental variables based on user ratings and awards shows that the conclusions are robust.