During 2008 and 2009 the domestic box office grew by double digits, outpacing the overall annual growth. This trend is likely to repeat this year as first quarter results passed $2.4 billion, 10.2% over last year and over a third bigger than where it was in 2006.

This strong start should provide a good base for 2010, probably allowing Hollywood to break past $10 billion once again.

In a March 2009 post I referenced that a Variety article that described the first quarter ‘box office boom’ as being propelled by the distribution of movies with large production budgets during that period. In follow-up post I graphed the biggest budget releases by month between 2005 and 2009. The results indicated that March budgets were indeed gradually growing whereas budgets for January and February releases had stagnated.

The following graph is updated for this year’s releases. During the first quarter of this year, the highest budgets average out to $143 million, 67% higher than the 2009 releases.

Of course, a good portion of this year’s box office, around 18%, is due to Avatar, which was released in December of 2009, so not all of the 2010′s first quarter box office growth can be attributed to bigger budget releases during that period. In any case this year’s success will likely incentivize studios to continue placing bigger movies early in the year.