Chinese box office grew to $2.16 billion (13.4 billion yuan) in the first half of 2014, up 22 percent from last year.
Domestic movies accounted for $1.04 billion (6.45 billion yuan) or 48 percent, while foreign movies accounted for $1.12 billion (6.95 billion yuan) or 52 percent, according to official data.
Of the top 10 movies in the first half of the year in the world’s second biggest film market, four were Chinese and the remaining six were from Hollywood.
The biggest movie of the year so far was the local fantasy epic The Monkey King. Hong Kong director Cheang Pou-soi's 3D fantasy epic took $170 million.
The biggest selling foreign movie was the 20th Century Fox tentpole X-Men: Days of Future Past, which has taken nearly $118 million so far, and benefited from Hugh Jackman and Peter Dinklage visiting Beijing to do promotional duties.
In third place was Captain America: The Winter Soldier, with $115 million and the reality TV adaptation Where Are We Going, Dad with $112 million.
In fifth place, already, was Transformers: Age of Extinction, which is on track to be the biggest selling movie of all time in the country, but was only showing for four days by the cut-off point for the six-month box office data. In those four days, M1905 said, it took $100.46 million (623 million yuan).
There were 31 films during the period that made more than 100 million yuan ($16.12 million), a key marker in measuring Chinese box office. Fourteen were local films and 17 were imported titles.
For comparison purposes -- in 2011, the first half box office was $920 million, rising to $1.3 billion in 2012; and it was $1.77 billion in the first half of last year. In the past four years, first-half box office has grown by 20 percent a year.
China’s overall movie box office sales rose 27 percent to $3.6 billion in 2013, according to data released by the Motion Picture Association of America.
Last year, China became the first international market to exceed $3 billion in box office, according to the MPAA.
Of the top 10 grossing movies last year in China, seven were domestic films.