Total cinema box office for UK and Ireland passed the £1 billion barrier on Saturday 8 October, the shortest time ever to that milestone.
Even in 2015, itself a record-breaking year, the £1 billion figure was not reached until 26 October, a full 17 days later than 2016. That success in box office receipts is also being matched in admissions, which at end September were running around 2 per cent higher than the same point in 2015.
Buoyed in particular by an exceptionally strong Summer film slate, cinema operators are looking forward to more records being broken as the year progresses, with huge expectations around the upcoming Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and Rogue One: a Star Wars Story in particular.