A crowd of people waits to see films at a cinema in Shenyang, Northeast China's Liaoning province, Feb 6, 2019. (Photo: VCG)

Chinese domestic box office set a new high in global film history, making single-month record in February, Economic View reported on Friday.

By 17:00 Feb 28, Chinese mainland's film industry collected a record 11 billion yuan ($1.64 billion) at the box office in February, up from 10.1 billion yuan in the same period last year, the report said.

The Chinese mainland becomes the first film market to break the 10 billion yuan mark twice in single-month box office revenue.

A total of 10.41 million films were screened in Chinese mainland in February by 17:00 on Thursday, attracting about 259 million movie enthusiasts, according to statistics from Entgroup, a big data consultation firm for China's Media and Entertainment industry.

About 203 new movie theatres were built and 1,221 projection screens were added last month, making the total number of movie theatres and projection screens rise to 10,493 and 62,310, the data shows.

On Feb 5, the first day of the Year of the Pig, Chinese cinemas raked in more than 1.43 billion yuan in sales, surpassing the previous 1.27 billion yuan single-day record set during the last Spring Festival.

China's first domestic sci-fi blockbuster The Wandering Earth became the box office champion of this year's Spring Festival and the screening period will be extended to May.

As world's second-largest film market, China grossed over 60.9 billion yuan in revenue last year.

The film industry's performance during Spring Festival is highly watched as it is considered as an indicator for the whole year revenue and viewers' preference.