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.

According to a Variety article that I commented on yesterday, during the past four years new sources of funding like private equity money have created a ‘surplus of movies’ that are forcing Hollywood to release ‘heavyweight’ movies across a wider spectrum of dates, other than on just around Easter, summer and the year-end holidays. During the past five years the biggest budget releases have normally been focused on these dates, but higher budget ceilings are slowly creeping up around other months.

The months of May, June and December stand out as being the points of highest investment. The three highest spikes in the graph are in May 2007, November 2008 and December 2009, respectively for Spider-Man 3 ($258 million), Quantum of Solace ($230 million) and Avatar ($250 million). August  was slow before 2007, before it was considered part of the summer blockbuster season.

Looking at the first quarter, with the exception of Astérix aux jeux Olimpiques in 2008, January held budgets below $70 million. In fact the last time Hollywood launched a January release with greater than a $75 million budget was in 2000 with Fantasia 2000. This February no studio released a major picture. March has seen the most steady rise, reaching $130 million this year with Watchmen. Inversely, April has been falling, perhaps since studios prefer to delay big releases until May.

Based on the extraordinary box office performance during the first quarter of 2009, perhaps studios will overcome their fear and place more blockbusters there in the future.