(Yicai Global) March 1 -- Chinese mainland box office revenue exceeded CNY10 billion (USD1.5 billion) last month, breaking both domestic and global single-month takings records.

February box office revenue driven by the week-long Spring Festival holiday, which marks the Chinese New Year, broke not only the single-month box office record of CNY7.37 billion last August, but also beat the world's single-month box office takings of USD1.38 billion set by the North American market in July 2011.

This year's strongest Chinese Lunar New Year movie releases are the most important reason why February's box office set such a historic record, showed data from China's State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television. As of February 21, the last day of the Lunar New Year holiday, the Spring Festival movies raked in CNY5.72 billion, up nearly 67 percent over the same period last year, hitting a new record.

This year's Spring Festival saw a strong release of movies with high quality and in large quantity. A strong showing by sequels of domestic productions buoyed takings over this year's Spring Festival. On the first day of the Festival holiday, Feb. 16, six new films were released at the same time, generating a box office revenue of CNY1.26 billion, breaking the global single-day record in a single market. With 32.17 million cinemagoers that day, it also beat the world record in terms of single-day audience size in a single market.

Hit films contributed the most to the record box office revenue of CNY10 billion in the world's second-largest movie market last month. Detective Chinatown 2 raked in CNY2.83 billion, while Operation Red Sea earned CNY2.436 billion and Monster Hunt 2 CNY2.095 billion. The Monkey King 3 grossed over CNY698 million.

China's movie market is projected to become the world's biggest by 2020, the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television said last August. In 2017, box office revenues climbed more than 13 percent to over CNY55.9 billion, with domestic movies accounting for almost 54 percent of the market.