China's box office has already raked in over 10 billion yuan ($1.55 billion) for the year as of 9:30 am Tuesday as Spring Festival holiday blockbusters such as "Detective Chinatown 3" and "Hi, Mom" drew millions of viewers to cinemas, according to data from box office tracker platform Lighthouse.

Data shows that over 229 million movie tickets, including pre-sales, have been sold.

The week-long Spring Festival holiday is a peak season for Chinese cinemas. This year witnessed an increasing number of people flocking to cinemas during the Chinese New Year holiday as many chose to stay put amid the coronavirus pandemic.

China's movie market generated more than 1.7 billion yuan ($263 million) in box office takings on February 12, the start of the Year of the Ox, with nearly 34 million movie goers, according to figures released by China Film Administration.

It set a new record for the daily box office of China's film market and broke the single-day box office record for a single market in the world.

As of Monday evening, the cinema box office for this year's Spring Festival exceeded six billion yuan ($929 million), breaking the 2019 record of 5.9 billion yuan ($913.8 million).

Seven titles of different genres hit the theaters nationwide last Friday on the first day of Chinese New Year, allowing viewers who didn't return home for family reunions to pick their favorite pictures to celebrate the festival.

Domestic comedies "Detective Chinatown 3" and "Hi, Mom" dominated the holiday box office with around 3.3 billion yuan ($511.1 million) and 2.1 billion yuan ($325.3 million) in revenues, respectively. Fantasy picture "A Writer's Odyssey" ranked third on the chart, taking 465 million yuan ($72 million).

Despite the six-month cinema shutdown, China's movie market took around 20.42 billion yuan ($3.16 billion) in box office revenues last year, overtaking North America ($2.2 billion) to become the world's biggest movie market for the first time.

(Video contributed by Lyne Lin. )

(Cover: Viewers at a movie theater in Beijing, China, February 13, 2021. /CFP)