DHAKA: Chinese cinema box office revenue has surged 32% in the first nine months of the year.

Figures show, reports the BBC.

Takings have reached 21.6bn yuan so far, already nearly equalling 2013’s full-year total of 21.8bn yuan.

The best performing movie of 2014 to date is ‘Transformers: Age of Extinction’, which took 1.98bn yuan.

The top 10 was split evenly between domestic and Hollywood blockbusters.

Fantasy 3D epic ‘The Monkey King’, directed by Hong Kong’s Poi Soi Cheang, was the highest grossing domestic movie with 1.04bn yuan.

Bryan Singer’s ‘X-Men: Days of Future Past’ was the third biggest movie of the year taking 724m yuan, with comic book film ‘Captain America: The Winter Soldier’ fourth with 721m yuan in box office receipts.

Sequels ‘Dawn of the Planet of the Apes’ and ‘The Amazing Spider-Man 2’ also featured in the top 10.

China is the second biggest film market in the world and last year became the first international market to gross more than $3bn at the box office.

It is thought the country’s box office receipts could exceed 30.7bn yuan in 2014 with some big releases still to come.

Marvel’s ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ will be released on 10 October with Jiang Wen 3D sequel ‘Gone with the Bullets’ due in December.

BDST: 1719 HRS, OCT 01, 2014