Why 2015 has been a blockbuster year for cinema

It has been a phenomenal year for blockbuster films, with four movies smashing box office records to take their place in the top ten highest-grossing films of all time.

Jurassic World earned $1.6bn this year, making it the highest grossing film of 2015 and the third of all time. Avatar and Titanic both hold on to the top two positions, with over $2bn in earnings each.

Meanwhile, Fast and Furious 7 earned $1.5bn, Marvel's the Avengers 2: Age of Ultron took $1.4bn and the animated sensation the Minions raked in $1.2bn.

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So why have these films broken records? Inflation is one reason, as is the burgeoning market for Western blockbusters in China.

But there is also a notable pattern, Keith Simanton, senior film editor at the Internet Movie Data Base (IMDB), told the BBC earlier this year.

"We've got sequels and reboots and re-imaginings," he said. "People are going to see 'event' films, and they certainly saw Jurassic World harking back to a franchise that people really loved."

The upcoming new Star Wars film epitomises that sense of nostalgia and could easily smash all this year's records.

Many predict that Star Wars 7: The Force Awakens will comfortably beat the $209 million opening weekend record set by Jurassic World in June, but even then it's unlikely to knock Avatar off the top spot.

"[It] will depend on whether it catches fire in countries like China and Russia, where Star Wars isn't the long-established cultural phenomenon it is in the West," says the Wall street Journal.

Infographic by www.statista.com for TheWeek.co.uk.