Movie Box-Office Totals for 2012 Projected to Set Record

Batman, James Bond, teenage vampires and a team of superheroes helped propel domestic movie ticket sales in 2012 to a projected all-time high of $10.8 billion, reversing a slump that saw attendance drop to a 16-year low last year.

Box-office receipts are likely to be up 6% compared with last year, as is attendance, which is on track to hit 1.36 billion, according to hollywood.com. That’s much-needed good news for the film business, though this year’s attendance figure is far from record-breaking — in 2002, 1.6 billion showed up at the box office.

Meanwhile, ticket sales from abroad continued to significantly boost bottom lines in Hollywood, because 15 of the year’s top 20 pictures grossed more abroad than they did in the U.S. and Canada. For instance, 81% of the total $875 million in receipts for the 3-D animated film “Ice Age: Continental Drift” came from overseas.